Spanish American fiction has become a world phenomenon in the twentieth century through multilanguage translations of such onvels as Gabriel Carcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Yet these "block@busters" are only a tiny fraction of the total, rich outpouring of Spanish-language literature from Latin America. In this book, Naomi Lindstrom offers English-language readers a comprehensive survey of the century's literary production in Latin America (excluding Brazil). Discussing movements and trends, she places the famous masterworks in historical perspective and highlights authors and works that deserve a wider readership. Her study begins with Rodo's famous essayAriel and ends with Rigoberta Menchu's 1992 achievement of the Nobel Prize. Special features of the book include its treatment of the "postboom" period and its emphasis on works that are available in good English translations.