SOURCE: "A Reading of Vargas Llosa's The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta," in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. XV, No. 29, January-June, 1987, pp. 133-39.

In the following excerpt, Guzman contends that the political interpretation of The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta is key to a full understanding of the novel.

The Latin American literary "Boom" of the Sixties remains one of the very few triumphant happenings ever to spring from that troubled and unhappy region of the world. In fact, widely different kinds of reading audiences enjoyed the magical quality of the novels produced in those years. Some read them because they were tired of European literary fashions such as the Nouveau Roman and, more generally speaking, because there was a wide-spread desire for reading experiences different from the ones afforded by novels produced in Europe or the United States. These audiences delighted in reading accounts of heroic deeds...