José María Arguedas's original intent as a writer was not to create highly crafted fiction but to understand the nature of the society in which he lived. This is partly why he chose to pursue anthropology. In it he found a discipline and a logic capable of understanding living societies. Arguedas repeatedly criticized Hispanist and Indianist historians, as well as the social scientists studying Peru, for not linking the experience of Indians and mestizo cultures living today with the Chavin, Nazca, Chimú, and Inca civilizations of the past. When Arguedas began to write fiction, he did so because he was convinced that the world of his childhood had never been captured in any text he had read thus far. His short stories and novels would bring forth an unprecedented universe in which human relations, feeling, and a sense of the relationship of men to...