Author Description

"Provides a biographical and bibliographical compendium of Central American writers. The brief entries for Costa Rica (65), El Salvador (55), Guatemala (74), Honduras (65), Nicaragua (78), and Panama (65) cover mainly 20th-century writers (the earliest is Nicaraguan Mariano Barreto, 1856-1927). Each national section is preceded by commentaries on that country's most important writers, thus for Guatemala there are no entries for Asturias or Arévalo Martínez but rather a note about each. Despite his attention to Panama, the youngest Central American state, Arellano has omitted discussion of the important colonial and 19th-century literatures for Nicaragua and Guatemala. Although flawed, this work is necessary given the paucity of Central American publications of this kind and limited access to them"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.