SOURCE: “Beyond Magic Realism,” in Commentary, Vol. 78, No. 6, December, 1984, pp. 63-7.

In the following essay, Kaplan discusses sociopolitical events in Latin America and the ways in which they have been interpreted in works of magic realism.

The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is known both for his interest in politics and for his realistic narratives, as contrasted with the experimental forms favored by a number of his Latin American contemporaries. In his most recent novel, The War of the End of the World, Vargas Llosa has expressed his views on the dynamics of his continent's politics more forthrightly than in any of his previous books. He has done so, moreover, by recreating with scrupulous precision a real historical event, and has even dedicated his work to the author of the primary source on this event, which carried within itself many if not most of the central elements, the...