A comprehensive resource that covers a period from 1788, the year Miguel Learte wrote Las aventuras de Learte, until 1990, when authors such as Osvaldo Soriano and Luisa Valenzuela published their popular novels. Also includes works which may be considered under the rubric of short novel which, in spite of their length, resemble the novel more than the short story in their basic literary conception, plot development, and narrative scope. Novels written by native Argentines and transplants are included. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book Spanish American novels of the Boom period (1962-1967) attracted a world readership to Latin American literature, but Latin American writers had already been engaging in the modernist experiments of their North American and European counterparts since the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, the desire to be "modern" is a constant preoccupation in twentieth-century Spanish American literature and thus a very useful lens through which to view the century's novels. In this pathfinding study, Raymond L. Williams offers the first complete analytical and critical overview of the Spanish American novel throughout the entire twentieth century. Using the desire to be modern as his organizing principle, he divides the century's novels into five periods and discusses the differing forms that "the modern" took in each era. For each period, Williams begins with a broad overview of many novels, literary contexts, and some cultural debates, followed by new readings of both canonical and significant non-canonical novels. A special feature of this book is its emphasis on women writers and other previously ignored and/or marginalized authors, including experimental and gay writers. Williams also clarifies the legacy of the Boom, the Postboom, and the Postmodern as he introduces new writers and new novelistic trends of the 1990s.