A Fish in the Water: A Memoir

By Llosa Vargas and Mario Vargas Llosa

Book Overview

Mario Vargas Llosa's A Fish in the Water is a twofold book: a memoir of one of Latin America's most celebrated witers, beginning with his birth in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru; and the story of his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374155097
• ISBN13: 9780374155094
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Length: 532 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

el pez en el agua

I want to read and buy it, but I don't know how to do it or how to read the back of the book, I want it in spanish please

Insightful!

?Fish in the Water? is a surprisingly honest book and therefore a very interesting autobiography. Split between his childhood and his failed bid for president, Vargas Llosa does more than give a personal chronology of his life: he presents a searing and critical examination of Peruvian society as a whole, from its ongoing political corruption to the complex levels of racism that plague everyone in this nation.He details his escapades as a Bohemian, where he experimented with cocaine at the age of 14 and became a regular at several brothels. He talks about his first failed marriage and the brutality of his father. And he gives some very personal insights into some of his most famous books, like ?The Green House? and ?Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.? Fans of his novels will find these sections very satisfying.But also, he provides a detailed account of his three-year run for the Peruvian leadership, in which he was constantly attacked verbally by opposition forces and physically threatened by the opposition?s cronies. He talks about his frustration and relief at losing the campaign to Fujimori, a virtual unknown in Peruvian politics. And he even predicts the downfall of Fujimori via Montesinos, who even in 1993 was a notoriously corrupt figure.Rarely do we get such a clear, firsthand account of the politics in Latin America. This book is a real treat.

Bittersweet Tale of a Sacrificial Llama

A Fish In the Water is Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's bittersweet tale of the three years he spent in public life and of his quixotic campaign for the presidency of his native Peru.His candidacy, he says, all came about "through the caprice of the wheel of fortune." At the time, he thought his decision to run for president of Peru was a "moral" one. "Circumstances," he writes, "placed me in a position of leadership at a critical moment in the life of my country." But Vargas Llosa is first and foremost a writer, not a politician, and so he has been willing to dig a little deeper into the reasoning behind his decision. "If the decadence, the impoverishment, the terrorism, and the multiple crises of Peruvian society had not made it an almost impossible challenge to govern such a country, it would never have entered my head to accept such a task." Motivation doesn't get much more quixotic than that.Even more engaging than Vargas Llosa's revelations about his unsuccessful foray into the political world, are his reminiscences about his childhood and youth, which he intersperses throughout this book. He begins with a vivid and traumatic memory: the revelation by his mother that his father, whom the author thought had died before his birth, was, in reality, alive and waiting to meet him in a nearby hotel. It was a revelation that Vargas Llosa did not greet with joy.In fiction, the cruelties experienced in childhood might be used to help explain the adult who survived them, but Vargas Llosa wisely makes no attempt to connect the two. The sections regarding the presidential campaign and those on his youth run along parallel tracks, but the story of his early life trails off after his graduation from college and his decision to go to Europe to write. The matter-of-fact air about the stories suggests that Vargas Llosa is more concerned with remembering than with interpreting and analyzing.While the personal memories make for the most compelling reading, the campaign memoir does offer a convincing self-portrait of a political innocent sinking under a tide of democratic absurdities. Wildly popular at first, Vargas Llosa presented a coherent, but harsh, economic plan to his fellow Peruvians and rapidly became Peru's sacrificial llama. Near the end of the campaign, he endured catcalls, stone throwing and scurrilous allegations about almost everything, including his books.Those of us who know and love Vargas Llosa and his books greeted his loss to Alberto Fujimori with more than one sigh of relief. But anyone who has an interest in the gorgeous landscape of Peru, Latin American politics, or the magnificent works of Mario Vargas Llosa will find this book essential reading.

Navegate into deep Latin American roots.

Through the pages of A fish in the water you can navegate into deep Latin American, not only Peruvian, roots. The family, the society, the political system that corrodes even the best intended winds of change by protecting a status quo of paternalism and long time compromises. An excellent book that you would not want to end...

The extraordinary life of an extraordinary writer

This book should be in everyone's reading list A Fish In The Water is a fascinating book that works on many levels, as a memoir of an extraordinary childhood as a portrait of families in transition (his parents', his grandparents', his own) throughout the years, as a coming of age story a chronicle of a grueling political campaign a snapshot of a complex society that for many of us, even those born and raised in Latin America, remains a mystery, a statement of the author's political beliefs, and their evolution throughout the years, and as a saga of the writer's beginnings as he evolved to become one of the premier authors of our times. This candid, at times unflinchingly honest, book rivals some of the outstanding memoirs of or times (such as Speak, Memory, and others) in richness, texture, and quality of detail. The dual structure brings to mind the "vasos comunicantes" of his work in fiction, overlapping the early years with the political campaign. A master of the Spanish language, and of characterization, theme, and plot, Vargas Llosa has earned an eminent place in contemporary literature. This is one of his outstanding works, a diamond among gems. Fifty years from now, people might not remember who was president of Peru, but I'm willing to bet that in five hundred years from now Mario Vargas Llosa's work will continue to dazzle.