With such figures as Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel ngel Asturias and Gabriel Garc穩a M獺rquez (both the latter Nobel Prizewinners) Spanish American fiction is now unquestionably an integral part of
the mainstream of Western literature. This book draws on the most recent research in describing the origins and development of narrative in Spanish America during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, tracing the pattern from Romanticism and Realism, through Modernismo, Naturalism and Regionalism to the Boom and beyond. It shows how, while seldom moving completely away from
satire, social criticism and protest, Spanish American fiction has evolved through successive phases in which both the conceptions of the writer's task and presumptions about narrative and
reality have undergone radical alterations. DONALD SHAW holds the Brown Forman Chair of Spanish American literature in the University of Virginia.
