Spanning thirty years of writing, these essays trace the development of Mario Vargas Llosa's thinking on politics and culture, and show the breadth of his interests and passions. Featured here are astute meditations on the Cuban Revolution, Latin American independence, the terrorism of Peru's Shining Path, and the presidency of Alberto Fujimoro; brilliant engagements with such towering figures of twentieth-century literature as Joyce, Faulkner, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Bellows; considerations on the dog cemetery where Rin-Tin-Tin is buried, Lorena Bobbitt's knife, and the failures of the English public-school system, which made Vargas Llosa's son into a Rastafarian.

This collection reminds us "that literature is fire, that it means nonconformity and rebellion...(that it) is a form of permanent insurrection". Making Waves superbly exemplifies Vargas Llosa's artistic credo.