Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat. He has also won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor. His many works include The Feast of the Goat, The Bad Girl, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. John King is a professor of Latin American cultural history at the University of Warwick, England. He is the coeditor, with Efrain Kristal, of The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa, and he has edited and translated several volumes of Vargas Llosa's essays, including Making Waves (FSG, 1996) and Touchstones (FSG, 2007).
"""Notes on the Death of Culture is a provocative essay collection on the fast decline of intellectual life, and one that manages the dual feat of shedding light while spreading gloom . . . And yet towards the end of these intelligent, penetrative, rigorous, but sporadically mournful essays we can detect a glimmer of hope."" --Malcolm Forbes, The New Criterion ""Making Waves is fascinating . . . [It] is a diverse and representative volume that allows us, for the first time, to trace this enigmatic, often brilliant writer's . . . intellectual journey."" --Jay Parini, The New York Times Book Review on Making Waves"