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Arts & CultureBooks
I first discovered Mario Vargas Llosa in 1990 when I was in Peru to see a friend climb Machu Picchu and write an article That was the time when Vargas Llosa the novelist was running for president of Peru The guerilla movement Shining Path was terrorizing the countryside and the economy was fal
An outdoor market in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.
Politics & Society
Dennis M. Leder
What drew you to Guatemala?
Arts & CultureBooks
Gerald T. Cobb
The front cover of 'Living to Tell the Tale' shows the author as a wide-eyed child of 2, while the back cover shows the Nobel laureate as a distinguished gentleman of 75.
FaithVantage Point
Paul Farmer

Graham Greene's The Comedians is surely the most famous novel set in contemporary Haiti. The book, published in 1965, introduced the English-speaking world to the methods of governance of président-a-vie Francois Duvalier. Following the novel's publication, both Greene and his book were banned in Haiti. Papa Doc was furious with the expose, certainly, but he was also vexed by the ethnographic detail of the novel. Trained as an anthropologist, the dictator knew that careful observers like Greene are always more difficult to discredit. Duvalier did his best, however, going so far as to produce a glossy bilingual pamphlet, Graham Greene Demasque, which depicted the writer as "unbalanced, sadistic, perverted ... the shame of proud and noble England." Although Greene would later term this assessment "the greatest honor I've yet received," Duvalier was not joking. The Comedians, travelers to Haiti were warned, was a book that even the luggage-rifling thugs at the airport could recognize.