The Storyteller - by Mario Vargas Llosa (Paperback)

About the Book

In a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon an exhibition of photographs from the Amazon jungle. As he stares at a picture of a tribal storyteller who holds a circle of Machiguenga Indians entranced, he is overcome by the eerie sense that he knows this man and that the storyteller is not an Indian at all, but an old school friend.

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

Review Quotes

"Intellectual, ethical, and artistic, all at once and brilliantly so." --The New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant . . . A whole culture is contained within these dreamy narratives." --Raymond Sokolov, The Wall Street Journal

"Engrossing, engaging and thought-provoking . . . An intricate weaving of political commentary and narrative style." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"A fascinating tale . . . with enormous skill and formal grace, Vargas Llosa weaves through the mystery surrounding the fate of Saul Zuratas." --Time

"It is in the chapters narrated by the storyteller that the novel comes wonderfully alive, transporting the reader to a world where men hang suspended in a delicate web of cosmic relationships." --Mark Dery, The Philadelphia Enquirer

About the Author

Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Peru in 1936. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." He also won the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor. His many works of fiction and nonfiction include The Feast of the Goat, In Praise of the Stepmother, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, all published by FSG. He died in Lima at age 89 in 2025.