In this beautifully written book Carlos Fonseca offers a forceful account of what he calls the catastrophic paradigm of history in Latin America, proceeding by way of shock and aftershock to present ways in which writers have coped with three types of disaster or catastrophe: earthquakes, volcanic explosions, and epidemics. This is a must-read for literary scholars, cultural historians, and critical theorists alike.

Bruno Bosteels, Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University, USA, and author of Marx and Freud in Latin America (2012)

<i>The Literature of Catastrophe</i> sheds new light on catastrophe as a literary subject and pervasive trope in Latin American cultural history. Fonseca's daring hypothesis on catastrophe as the point of disruption that unsettles the progressive ordering of time and history is particularly effective. His intervention in the ongoing debate on the Anthropocene and our planet's disjointed times is of utmost relevance.

Julio Ramos, Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Berkeley, USA, and author of Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (1989, 2001)