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Letters to a Young Novelist

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Letters to a Young Novelist
AuthorMario Vargas Llosa
TranslatorNatasha Wimmer
LanguageSpanish
GenreLiterary criticism (writing manual)
Publication date
1997
Pages136 p.

Letters to a Young Novelist (Cartas a un joven novelista) is a non-fiction book by the Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, published in 1997. An English translation by Natasha Wimmer was published in 2001. In 2011, the book was listed byThe Guardian among the 100 best non-fiction books.[1]

Following in the footsteps of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Vargas Llosa in Letters to a Young Novelist discusses important tools and techniques of writing in eleven essays, in some cases using a classic text as an example, using letters as an organizational principle.[2] However, unlike in Rilke's book, the "young novelist" of the title is generally understood to be a conceit; there is no intended recipient other than the reader.[3]

Contents

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The eleven essays (and postscript) of the book are titled as follows:

  • The Parable of the Tapeworm
  • The Catoblepas
  • The Power of Persuasion
  • Style
  • The Narrator and Narrative Space
  • Time
  • Levels of Reality
  • Shifts and Qualitative Leaps
  • Chinese Boxes
  • The Hidden Fact
  • Communicating Vessels
  • By Way of a P.S.

References

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  1. ^ "The 100 greatest non-fiction books". The Guardian. 14 June 2011.
  2. ^ LETTERS TO A YOUNG NOVELIST | Kirkus Reviews.
  3. ^ Axelrod, Mark (Spring 2004). "Mario Vargas Llosa. Letters to a Young Novelist". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. 23 (1) – via Gale Literature Resource Center.
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