This book studies the various narrative shades of love in twentieth-century Latin American fiction. It examines writings by Isabel Allende, Roberto Arlt, García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. The author provides a close textual reading of each novel and discusses how humans make sense of their lives through love. He shifts the focus of these writings from political violence and historical disillusionment to the illusion of love. An important contribution to Latin American literary criticism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of literature, history, Latin American literature, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, comparative literature, and sociology.