The Perpetual Orgy

By Mario Vargas Llosa

Book Overview

The book's first section is a tete-a-tete with Emma Bovary; the second traces the gestation and birth of the novel, as well as Flaubert's method, his mania for documentation, and the novel's literary sources; the third situates it in literary history. Vargas Llosa's first work of non-fiction will send the reader back to Flaubert's masterpiece with renewed interest.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374520623
• ISBN13: 9780374520625
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

literature is one perpetual orgy

This book is about Mme Bovary, Flaubert and writing fiction. What is fiction, who is an author and why does he write? " 'The race of gladiators is not dead; every artist is one. He amuses the public with his agonies'. The truth is that, by writing about them, 'agonies' are mitigated; literature exorcises them or makes them endurable." (p. 89)