Venezuelan cultural expression of the twentieth century has mirrored the liberal origin of its Creole elite, which evolved from a comprador (consumer) class and saw itself as part of a potentially great liberal metropolis capable of modernizing the country. The classic liberal free market had been discredited by the actions of Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez and others who handed over the national wealth for luxury products for the elite. An alternative based on economic reform--import substitution--was promoted by the new generation of writers and the populist Acción Democrática party, inspired by Rómulo Gallegos's great novel Doña Bárbara (1929), whose message was that civilization conquers barbarism.

Miguel Otero Silva's novels parallel the rise and fall of the modern novel in Venezuela with the rise and climax of bourgeois democracy, beginning with Fiebre (Fever, 1939), the first avant-garde novel...