The Death of Artemio Cruz

Description: 

Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico's best-known contemporary writers, is a leading figure in the Latin American "literary boom" who has contributed greatly to the canon of Spanish American literature. His novel, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), widely regarded as his first major novel, quickly become a landmark in Mexican and Latin American fiction. The novel explores the legacy of the Mexican Revolution as filtered through the eyes of Artemio Cruz, lying on his deathbed. Fuentes uses complex and innovative narrative techniques, allowing Cruz's story to emerge in a series of voices from both the past and the present. At the heart of this story is the search for Mexican national identity among the promises and failures of the Mexican Revolution.

The Death of Artemio Cruz is Fuentes' best-known novel, and acknowledged masterpiece in the boom of recent Latin American fiction.

—Wendy Faris

In part a showcase of technical experimentation, La muerte de Artemio Cruz, more importantly explores themes of individual psychology and morality, national history and identity, and certain regional and continental concerns.

—Robin Fiddian

VIVA MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS presents the best current criticism on the most widely read and studied poems, novels and dramas of the Western world, from Oedipus Rex and the Iliad to such modern and contemporary works as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Each volume opens with an introductory essay and editor's note by Harold Bloom and includes a bibliography, a chronology of the author's life and works, and notes on the contributors. Taken together, VIVA MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS provides a comprehensive critical guide to the most vital and influential works of the Western literary tradition.

Target Audience:

Students & academics of English literature.