<p><b>The latest masterpiece</b><b>--perceptive, funny, insightful, affecting</b><b>--from the Nobel Prize-winning author</b><BR><b><br></b><BR><br>Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's newest novel, <i>The Discreet Hero</i>, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead.<BR><br> Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet, discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of their destinies in a social and political climate where all can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his own personal ideals and desires--which means forcibly rising above the pettiness of their surroundings. <i>The Discreet Hero</i> is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly--and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters.<BR><br> A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith Grossman's masterly translation, <i>The Discreet Hero</i> is another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin American novelist at work today.</p>