Internationally acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has contributed a biweekly column to Spain's major newspaper, El Pais, since 1977. In this collection of columns from the 1990s, Vargas Llosa weighs in on the burning questions of the last decade, including the travails of Latin American democracy, the role of religion in civic life, and the future of globalization. But Vargas Llosa's influence is hardly limited to politics. In some of the liveliest critical writing of his career, he makes a pilgrimage to Bob Marley's shrine in Jamaica, celebrates the sexual abandon of Carnaval in Rio, and examines the legacies of Vermeer, Bertolt Brecht, Frida Kahlo, and Octavio Paz, among others.;The lady from Somerset -- Shadows of friends -- The morality of cynics -- Postmodernism and frivolity -- Tragicomedy of a Jew -- God will provide -- Aid for the first world -- Italy is not Bolivia -- The death of the great writer -- Trench town rock -- The prince of doom -- Under the skies of Jerusalem -- French identity -- The sign of the cross -- Ceausescu's house -- The joys of Necrophilia -- The old man with the bunions -- A bourgeois paradise -- Cassandra's prophecies -- The immigrants -- The devil's advocate -- A defense of sects -- A walk through Hebron -- Seven years, seven days -- Nudes in a classical garden -- Epitaph for a library -- The hour of the charlatans -- Elephant dung -- A maiden -- Mandela's island -- The other side of paradise -- Painting to survive -- The language of passion -- The city of nests -- The unborn child -- New inquisitions -- The weaker sex -- Predators -- The permanent erection -- The lost battle of Monsieur Monet -- A death so sweet -- Fataumata's feet -- The suicide of a nation -- The Alexandrian -- The life and trials EliΓ‘n -- Pernicious futility.