"In the tradition of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers, revealing in the process his deepest beliefs about our common literary endeavor. A writer, in his view, is a being seized by an insatiable appetite for creation, a rebel and a dreamer. But dreams, when set down on paper, require disciplined development, and so Vargas Llosa undertakes to supply the tools of transformation.

Drawing on the stories and novels of writers from around the globe - Borges, Bierce, Celine, Cortazar, Faulkner, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet - he lays bare the inner workings of fiction, examining time, space, style, structure, all the while urging young novelists not to lose touch with the elemental urge to create.

Conversational, eloquent, and effortlessly erudite, this little book is destined to be read and reread by young writers, old writers, would-be writers, and all those with a stake in the world of letters."--BOOK JACKET.