SOURCE: "From Pedro Pdramo to Rayuela (1956-1962)," in The Spanish American Novel: A Twentieth-Century Survey, University of Texas Press, 1975, pp. 211-48.

Brushwood is an American writer and educator, and the author of several book-length studies and articles on Latin American literature. In the following excerpt, he discusses some major Latin American novels published between 1956 and 1962.

Although the terms "new Latin American novel" and "the boom" sometimes appear synonymous, they really indicate two different aspects of a single phenomenon—the

maturity of fiction in Latin America. Specifically with reference to the Spanish-speaking countries, it is convenient to think of the new novel as dating from the late 1940s, the years of the reaffirmation of fiction. The boom, on the other hand, best describes the unprecedented international interest enjoyed by Spanish American novelists in the 1960s, and the spectacular increase in the number of high-quality novels they produced...