c. the 90s I was taught Asturias and other members of El Boom like Gabriel Cabrera Infante, and Julio Cortázar, and also Borges and Isabel Allende, in English at the undergraduate level...
but that was by a particularly contemporary and enlightened professor of contemporary literature...
Super recommend: Blow-Up and Other Stories by Cortázar and of course for anyone who somehow hasn't read it Borges' Labyrinths... the latter in particular is full of ideas which resonate more ever more significance...
"You should read Jorge Luis Borges's short story 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'. It’s only six pages long, and you'll be wanting to drop me a postcard to thank me for pointing it out to you." - Douglas Adams
Labyrinth is incredible. It took me a while to grasp it and I still might've missed its point, but it was almost an epiphany like experience for me to understand that knowledge is discovered rather than created. On a fundamental level I've always understood that, but understanding that everything we will ever know as a species already exists as knowledge as is just to be discovered really changed my views.
Edit: can also really recommend The Southern Thruway by Cortázar
I can also recommend Cortázar's "The Southern Thruway" (La autopista del Sur). I read it by accident, more or less, in a short story collection. Still have to read Labyrinths by Borges...
but that was by a particularly contemporary and enlightened professor of contemporary literature...
Super recommend: Blow-Up and Other Stories by Cortázar and of course for anyone who somehow hasn't read it Borges' Labyrinths... the latter in particular is full of ideas which resonate more ever more significance...