Theorizing the Quasi-Private

The Latin American Family in Select Novels by Mario Vargas Llosa

Abstract

The family has, for centuries, engaged the Latin American imagination, as a quasi-private sphere where the subject negotiates with the inner/private and outer/public realms of existence, in compliance with, and at times in discordance with the state. The rapidly changing contours of the Latin American socio-political scenario have made its presence felt in the depiction of the family in literature. The paper attempts to explore the family as a kinship unit as depicted in the works of Mario Vargas Llosa, with special reference to Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) and The Discreet Hero (2013). Llosa’s works are unique in their depiction of the family in that the rupture of the established unit marks the movement of the narrative in conspicuous ways. The family serves as an interface between the public and the private and serves as the link connecting the characters to the outside world-i.e., the politico-jural domain” (Goody 93). The paper would explore the family as depicted in Llosa’s works as a quasi-private site of rupture existing in a complementary relationship with the state.