One of Latin Am erica's most garlanded novelists--and the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature--Mario Vargas Llosa is also an acute and wide-ranging cultural critic and an acerbic political commentator. "Touchstones "collects Vargas Llosa's brilliant readings of seminal twentieth-century novels, from "Heart of Darkness "to "The Tin Drum"; incisive essays on political and social thinkers; and contemporary pieces on 9/11 and the immediate aftermath of the war in Iraq.Fantastically intelligent, inspired, and surprising, "Touchstones "is a landmark collection of essays from one of the world's leading writers and intellectuals.