La mirada quieta (de Pérez Galdós)

Benito Pérez Galdós is an essential author in contemporary Spanish literature. In this essay, based on the analysis of his novels, his plays and national episodes, Mario Vargas Llosa creates a complete, personal and suggestive profile of the Spanish writer. No one like the Peruvian Nobel is capable of reading the work of a creator so shrewdly and with such freedom and passion. As the author himself states in the introduction to The Still Gaze, "Galdós did what Balzac, Dickens and Zola did in their respective nations: tell the history and social reality of their country. With his Episodes he was in line with those, turning the lived past into literary material, making available to the general public a quiet but entertaining version, well written, with living characters and solvent documentation, of a decisive century in Spanish history".