Mistress of Desires (NHB Modern Plays)

A powerful exploration of machismo and sexual desire, by Peru's most acclaimed writer. A Peruvian desert town in the 1940s. When a young girl disappears it seems that only La Chunga, the barwoman, knows the truth, but refuses to tell. Undeterred, the local men make up their own version of what happened in an attempt to extract the full story. Taken from the collection, Latin American Plays, an essential introduction to the fascinating but largely unexplored theatre of Latin America, Mistress of Desires by Mario Vargas Llosa interweaves reality and fantasy in an erotically charged tale. The full collection features new translations of five contemporary plays written by some of the region's most exciting writers. Each play is accompanied by an illuminating interview with its author conducted by the theatre director, Sebastian Doggart, who has also selected and translated the plays and provided an introductory history of Latin American drama. The collection also includes: Rappaccini's Daughter by Octavio Paz A play by the Mexican Nobel laureate. Night of the Assassins by José Triana A controversial Cuban play in which three siblings plot the murder of their parents. Saying Yes by Griselda Gambaro A grotesque comedy from Argentina about man's inhumanity to man. Orchids in the Moonlight by Carlos Fuentes A dream play about two Mexican women exiled in Hollywood's maze of mirrors.

Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa 'for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat'.