SOURCE: Review of The Language of Passion: Selected Commentary, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Kirkus Reviews 71, no. 5 (1 March 2003): 371.

In the following review, the critic commends Vargas Llosa's skill with the journalistic form in The Language of Passion.

“Novelist” just begins to cover the ground, for like many other Latin American writers of his generation—he was born in Lima in 1937 and began to write professionally in Spain in the late '50s—Vargas Llosa cut his teeth writing for daily papers and magazines. He continues to contribute to such periodicals; most of the pieces gathered in this exemplary volume, [The Language of Passion: Selected Commentary,] covering the '90s, first saw print in his occasional column in the Madrid daily El País. Less afraid of big ideas and big words than most American papers, the post-Franco Spanish press proves an ideal testing ground for Vargas Llosa's contrarian musings...