Fresh Look Reviews
Fresh, unique perspectives on recent books from across the hemisphere originally published in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
In this issue:
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2666 by Roberto Bolaño
by Edmundo Paz Soldán
Five years after Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s death in 2003, at the age of 50, critics, writers and readers agree that he is the most important author to have emerged in Latin America since the golden age of the 1960s, when Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortázar took the world by storm.
Bolaño is a primary influence for the new generation of French, Russian and American writers as well. Symptomatic of Bolaño’s quick canonization is the fact that The Savage Detectives is one of the only Latin American novels cited by James Wood, the prestigious New Yorker critic, in his recent How Fiction Works. The fact that Bolaño, rather than a writer like García Márquez, is in Wood’s book shows how quickly the Chilean writer’s stature is growing.
It would be surprising if 2666, Bolaño’s posthumous novel…
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Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States edited by Francis Fukuyama
by Nicolás Ducoté
That a development gap exists between the U.S. and Latin America is obvious. When, why and how it came about is less obvious. Francis Fukuyama´s latest book, an anthology of essays entitled Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States, succinctly attempts to explain the gap by taking into account history, politics, economics, and institutional analysis.
Fukuyama, a provocative analyst of world affairs, published two pieces about Latin America last year. In this collection, he enlists as contributors historians and political scientists who are well-versed in U.S.-Latin American relations and regional issues. The authors pack their knowledge into very readable and informative papers that complement each other well.
Fukuyama establishes the framework for this anthology…
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