The Crack and Contemporary Latin American Narrative: An Introductory Study

Abstract

During the 1990s, the Spanish American novel was receiving universal acclaim, a situation partly fueled by the competition among Spanish publishing houses, numerous translations into other languages, and a fast-paced book distribution system, prompted by new communication technologies. Boom writers, Gabriel Garcia Mârquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa, remained active until they were in their eighties, producing their literary works for over five decades and extending their literary careers—which included Nobel prizes for Garcia Mârquez and Vargas Llosa—until the twenty-first century. In addition, authors who started writing in the 1970s such as Isabel Allende, Ángeles Mastretta, and Antonio Skâ rmeta were becoming popular with the reading public, and young writers born in the 1970s in Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina, for example, found it easy to reach an international market previously reserved for consecrated authors. For literary critics, however, there were still many unresolved issues regarding the contemporary Latin American literary field. One of the main problems was the question of which name to use to describe this new literary period.