The Literary Representation of Peru

This study pieces together an image of Peru as a society through readings of a corpus of literary texts dating from the Conquest to the 1990s. Some chapters focus on recurrent topics: the centralization of power in Lima; the position of the indigenous population; literacy as power; the issue of national identity in a country characterized by diversity. It also examines other literary motifs such as dramatic social changes, communities living in isolation, the mestizo condition, and the hopes invested in modernization.