The Nobel-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has also been a prolific essayist pondering not only the meaning of literature but of culture and freedom. A collection of essays from the 1970s through the 2010s, Sabers and Utopias registers his disillusionment with the command-and-control socialism of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez whose example led him to embrace free market economics. But he is painfully aware that free markets can flourish under dictatorships such as that of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. The book’s title refers to the two ill-advised paths often taken in Latin America—military dictatorship or tyrannical Utopian projects. Many of his points, however, are applicable universally, especially his description of the fear-driven reactions that give rise to authoritarianism.
