SOURCE: Cohn, Deborah. “‘Regreso a la barbarie’: Intertextual Paradigms for Peru's Descent into Chaos in Lituma en los Andes.” Latin American Literary Review 28, no. 55 (January-June 2000): 27-45.

In the following essay, Cohn observes that “intertextuality pervades” Lituma en los Andes, asserting that an effective reading of the novel considers its political and social backdrop “as well as Vargas Llosa's interpretation of its significance from an evolutionary standpoint.”

In Jorge Luis Borges' “La muerte y la brújula,” a story of murder, sleuthing, and revenge in Buenos Aires, a single character controls the course of the investigation from behind the scenes, planting evidence—and plotting new crimes—that ultimately deliver the detective, his arch-enemy Erik Lonnrot, directly into his hands. Red Scharlach the Dandy, also known as Ginzberg, Ginsburg and Gryphius, is deliberately depicted as Godlike in his omniscience and apparent omnipotence. While Mario Vargas Llosa's 1993 murder mystery, Lituma en...