Shipwreck and Deliverance contrasts common European and American understandings of the philosophical, cultural and political problems of modernity with fresh perspectives written into the novels and essays of three major Latin American authors (Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vegas Llosa). The book argues that European and American analyses of modernity tend to be disproportionately analytical, highlighting the economic and socio-political consequences of modernity over the personal, emotional, and spiritual concerns that are of central importance to Latin American authors.