SOURCE: Bell-Villada, Gene H. Review of Death in the Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa. America 176, no. 7 (1 March 1997): 36-7.

In the following review of Death in the Andes, Bell-Villada argues that Vargas Llosa “wrote better books when he was a man of the left,” noting that his “greatest works” were written when the author was a sympathizer with 1960s radicalism.

Few would admit it, but Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa wrote better books when he was a man of the left. His greatest works—The Time of the Hero, The Green House and the truly magisterial Conversation in the Cathedral—all date from the 1960's, when he openly sympathized with that decade's radical causes. In the 1980's, however, the erstwhile independent leftist redefined himself as a crusading conservative. Since then, in his abundant opinion pieces for the Spanish-language press. Vargas Llosa regularly invokes free-market ideologues Robert Nozick and Milton...