Los cachorros (Letras Hispanica, 169) (Spanish Edition) [Paperback]

Mario Vargas Llosa (Author), Guadalupe Fernandez Ariza (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1982

Los cachorros, o "Pichula Cuéllar", es un pequeño clásico, escrito entre La casa verde y Conversación en La Catedral; pero es mucho más que un descanso entre dos obras maestras; es ella misma una joya literaria. En esta historia, centrada en un grupo de muchachos miraflorinos de los años cincuenta, uno de los cuales es castrado por un perro -de allí su apodo-, Vargas Llosa no sólo despliega fuegos artificiales técnicos, sino que profundiza en la psicología del protagonista y de quienes le rodean.

La narración, que también ha sido llevada al teatro, apela a temores arquetípicos (la castración) y a sus consecuencias, particularmente desgarradoras en una sociedad patriarcal y machista, recubierta tan sólo superficialmente por los criterios de la modernidad. Pero Los cachorros es también una declaración de nostálgico amor por una adolescencia y un Miraflores irremisiblemente perdidos.

En este relato se muestra la intuición de su autor, el dominio de las técnicas, que consiguen una prosa fluida, impactante, que deja huella. La historia tiene además la grandeza de ser muy local y muy universal, a la vez simbólica y realista. Consiguiendo su máximo afán: la totalidad.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: Spanish

Product Details

• Paperback: 121 pages
• Publisher: Catedra (1982)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 8437603552
• ISBN-13: 978-8437603551
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #511,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. In 1958 he earned a scholarship to study in Madrid, and later he lived in Paris. His first story collection, The Cubs and Other Stories, was published in 1959. Vargas Llosa's reputation grew with the publication in 1963 of The Time of the Hero, a controversial novel about the politics of his country. The Peruvian military burned a thousand copies of the book. He continued to live abroad until 1980, returning to Lima just before the restoration of democratic rule.

A man of politics as well as literature, Vargas Llosa served as president of PEN International from 1977 to 1979, and headed the government commission to investigate the massacre of eight journalists in the Peruvian Andes in 1983.

Vargas Llosa has produced critical studies of García Márquez, Flaubert, Sartre, and Camus, and has written extensively on the roots of contemporary fiction. For his own work, he has received virtually every important international literary award. Vargas Llosa's works include The Green House (1968) and Conversation in the Cathedral (1975), about which Suzanne Jill Levine for The New York Times Book Review said: "With an ambition worthy of such masters of the 19th-century novel as Balzac, Dickens and Galdós, but with a technical skill that brings him closer to the heirs of Flaubert and Henry James . . . Mario Vargas Llosa has [created] one of the largest narrative efforts in contemporary Latin American letters." In 1982, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter to broad critical acclaim. In 1984, FSG published the bestselling The War of the End of the World, winner of the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta was published in 1986. The Perpetual Orgy, Vargas Llosa's study of Flaubert and Madame Bovary, appeared in the winter of 1986, and a mystery, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, the year after. The Storyteller, a novel, was published to great acclaim in 1989. In 1990, FSG published In Praise of the Stepmother, also a bestseller. Of that novel, Dan Cryer wrote: "Mario Vargas Llosa is a writer of promethean authority, making outstanding fiction in whatever direction he turns" (Newsday).

In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of his native Peru. In 1994, FSG published his memoir, A Fish in the Water, in which he recorded his campaign experience. In 1994, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and, in 1995, the Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded to writers whose work expresses the idea of the freedom of the individual in society. In 1996, Death in the Andes, Vargas Llosa's next novel, was published to wide acclaim. Making Waves, a collection of his literary and political essays, was published in 1997; The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, a novel, was published in 1998; The Feast of the Goat, which sold more than 400,000 copies in Spanish-language, was published in English in 2001; The Language of Passion, his most recent collection of nonfiction essays on politics and culture, was published by FSG in June 2003. The Way to Paradise, a novel, was published in November 2003; The Bad Girl, a novel, was published in the U.S. by FSG in October, 2007. His most recent novel, El Sueño del Celta, will be published in 2011 or 2012. Two works of nonfiction are planned for the near future as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars La vida de Pichula, August 20, 2003

By 

"supermang78" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Los cachorros (Letras Hispanica, 169) (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

Este libro es corto pero poderoso. Nos detalla la vida de "Pichula" Cuellar....un nino quien sufre de una accidente feo y como este accidente impide a su desarollo como hombre. La narracion del libro es interesante y unica. Compran este libro y Disfrutanlo!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Muy interesante, Vargas Llosa es un maestro, January 27, 2011

By 

Juan Mallqui "Juan" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Los cachorros (Spanish Edition) (Kindle Edition)

En este libro corto Vargas Llosa nos lleva a la Lima de los 50's y 60's. Una Lima clasista por excelencia pero ese no es el punto del libro, en el nos deja ver la historia de un grupo de jovenes, con distintas personalidades, historias por lo general comicas, algunas te dejan pensando si talvez la historia de nuestros padres, tios y abuelos fueron parecidas a las de los del libro. Definitivamente una buena obra de Vargas Llosa, me ha servido para conocerle mas en sus comienzos y ahora pienso comprar otros libros que tambien tienen buenas reseñas.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars De la infancia a la juventud: la vida de "Pichula" Cuellar, May 20, 2001

By 

"kawaluana" (Lima, Peru) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Los cachorros (Paperback)

Es una historia que sobre la vida de un chico,"Pichula" Cuellar, que vive en la Lima de principios de los '60. De niño se cuenta su vida en el colegio, donde tiene un feo accidente, cuyas marcas tendra que sobrellevar toda su vida; más tarde sus salidas con sus amigos y el inicio de la vida social en la adolescencia; y finalmente sus problemas amorosos en la juventud... Narrado por el que se considera que es el mejor autor peruano...