This critical study offers many features of a literary history of the modern Latin American and Caribbean novel as well as several features of an encyclopedia. Part 1 is organized along the lines of a four-part history of the Latin American novel from 1945 to 2005. Part 2 is more encyclopedic in approach, with entries appearing under the letters A through Z that succinctly explain the novelistic tradition of specific nations, topics, authors, and the content of selected individual novels. Part 3 consists of an annotated bibliography of studies on the Latin American and Caribbean novel. Most of the novels described, analyzed, or mentioned in this study were written in Spanish, and many of these novels have been translated into English. Some of the novels were originally written in Portuguese (in Brazil), French (in the Caribbean), Dutch (in the Caribbean), and English (in the Caribbean and the United States), and some of these novels have been translated into English and other languages.
I am grateful for the contributions to the research for this work provided by research assistants George Carlsen, Adrian Kane, Lila McDowell, Gabriela Miranda-Recinos, José Recinos. I want to thank Susan Pensak of Columbia University Press.