The endless search for Oswaldo Reynoso

Abstract

Oswaldo Reynoso’s fiction reveals a writer committed to making censorious comments about the imperfections of Peruvian society in the 1950s and 60s. Reynoso analyses the end of Odría’s dictatorship and the frustrated hope in democracy that seemed to ultimately signify allegiance to capitalism, consumerism, and corruption. He does so by examining the speech of characters representing the middle and lower classes, and expressions that use informal language and slang in order to express disillusionment and rebellion, as well as their quest for happiness. For Reynoso, the Far East may be a model for the Far West in this quest.