After a long period during which Argentine literature (and Latin American literature in general) was almost always cast in molds imposed by foreign examples or by internal limitations, we have been witnessing over the past thirty years the appearance of creativity that is at last free, at last our own. But, as always happens in times of liberation, many of the new writers have fallen too easily into the trap of exaggeration and verbal libertinism…. Little by little, however, we are beginning to map perplexing territories, and the best Argentine writers labor in search for—and often the discovery of—that difficult balance from which great literature has always sprung. Luisa Valenzuela seems to me to be a perfect example of what I am asserting.

Courageous—with neither self-censorship or prejudice—careful of her language—which is excessive when necessary but magnificently refined and modest as well, whenever...