THE REAL LIFE OF ALEJANDRO MAYTA: THE LIMITED EDITION by Vargas Llosa, Mario (Translated by Alfred MacAdam) - 1986

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986. Hardcover. Fine/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 310 pages. The author's seventh novel. One of Mario Vargas Llosa's finest achievements. Limited Slipcased Edition of 125 numbered and signed copies. One of only two Limited Editions published by FSG of Vargas Llosa's books thus far (the other is "The War of The End of The World") , the limitation is among the smallest there is, considering it is a major work by a major writer. The Limited Edition is now rare. An austerely elegant production by Farrar, Straus & Giroux: Regular-sized volume format. Brown cloth boards with gilt titles embossed on the spine, as issued. Text by Mario Vargas Llosa. Cream hard board slipcase. Printed on archival stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents, in its Limited Edition format, Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta" in a felicitous English translation. His astute psychological portrait of a modern revolutionary in the form of an account by a former friend. Through this prism, the novel examines the long, violent, and painful history of Latin-American politics. Mario Vargas Llosa is the writer/intellectual/philosopher par excellence among the Latin-American geniuses of the so-called Boom: He refuses to be categorized, labeled, and reduced by ideology, whether it is Fascist conservatism, political correctness, or Leftist academicism, what he has condemned as "authoritarianism of the Left and the Right". He considers himself an heir to the great European cultural tradition yet his work is firmly grounded in Latin America's (not just his native Peru's) history and mythology. His aesthetics and literary practice - Vargas Llosa has embraced and appropriated every literary genre - prompted Roberto Bolano, his greatest successor, to consider him an inescapable influence, among a handful of others, on contemporary Latin-American literature. That is to say, to be a Latin-American writer is to become a Classical master of language and a Modernist artist, writing in language of the highest quality and reinventing literary form and convention at the same time. Literary genres are inventions of a particular culture's idea of imagination and storytelling, "templates" that Vargas Llosa transforms into "poetic tales" (in Harold Bloom's brilliant phrase) . An absolute "must-have" title for Mario Vargas Llosa collectors. <b><i> This is a copy of the Limited Slipcased Edition of 125 numbered and signed copies, indicated/numbered as such on the Front Limitation Page. It is very prominently and beautifully signed in blue ink-pen by Mario Vargas Llosa. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the Limited Edition still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws yet are priced as though they had collectible value. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. </b></i> Winner of the Cervantes Prize, awarded to the greatest living writers in Spanish by the Spanish Government, in 1994. Winner of the Jerusalem Prize in 1995. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MARIO VARGAS LLOSA TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374247765.