Farrar, Straus and Giroux
March 2015
On Sale: March 10, 2015
340 pages ISBN: 0374146748 EAN: 9780374146740 Kindle: B00MSYXJ4K Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
The latest masterpiece--perceptive, funny,
insightful, affecting--from the Nobel Prize-winning
author
Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's newest novel, The
Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose
lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito
Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds
himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a
successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks
up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who
want him dead.
Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet,
discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of
their destinies in a social and political climate where all
can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly
vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his
own personal ideals and desires--which means forcibly rising
above the pettiness of their surroundings. The Discreet
Hero is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite
players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma,
Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a
prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima
vividly--and the cities become not merely physical spaces
but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters.
A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith
Grossman's masterly translation, The Discreet Hero is
another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin
American novelist at work today.