In this book, Luciana A. Mellado studies a wide and diverse literary corpus, made up of productions by the Brazilian Joaquin Machado de Assis, the Cubans José Martí and Jesús Díaz, the Uruguayan José Rodó, the Peruvian José Mariátegui, the Chilean Roberto Bolaño and the Argentines Roberto Arlt and Graciela Cros. Through its different chapters, relations and tensions are proposed between the artistic field and the sociopolitical field, problematizing the literary praxis and the ways in which it is concretized. With an acute critical reading, she reflects on the way in which literature has been designing ways of looking at and thinking about Latin American culture. Her approach revisits the problem of representation in literature and the links of literary writing with life forms.