Chapter 7 reverses the perspective of the previous two chapters and reads several literary works to unearth their dialogue with the State’s surveillance. It begins with the analysis of García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch, emphasizing the role played by poetry in the novel and how it confronts hegemonic power. It then discusses the short story “The Most Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” and the ambiguity of the sense of liberation in its ending. The chapter then turns to two works by José Revueltas: the short story “Hegel and I,” which deals with the possibilities and limits of knowledge; and the novel “Errors,” which criticizes of the the Mexican Communist Party. The chapter continues with the analysis of several poems by Guatemalan writer and guerrillero Otto René Castillo, focusing on the relation between praxis and theory that all intellectual faces, and the importance of the lover’s gaze in the poetic construction of a new reality. Lastly, it examines the autobiographical text Thunder in the City, written by Mario Payeras . The author evokes his time in the urban guerrilla in the early 1980s in Guatemala City and provides a remarkable view into the State’s surveillance.

Benjamin Britten did more than any other composer since Henry Purcell to promote the genre of English opera and its use of the English language. There is less consensus on the contribution made by Myfanwy Piper as Britten’s librettist for The Turn of the Screw, Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice. Even a limited degree of familiarity with her libretti for Britten induces admiration owing to the precision behind her choice of word and phrase and the way they it can enhance immediacy. She herself has observed that all three libretti that she wrote for Britten were based on sophisticated texts. In his librettist, Britten trusted his closest concerns: someone who could translate the drama in the literary texts into taut succinct scenes; manage abrupt changes of mood; dovetail each scene neatly into the next so that narrative suspense is was sustained; and who could also manage pace, climax, and dramatic development with tact and sensibility. In all this Myfanwy Piper excelled, and she remains unsurpassed in the economy with which she handled words.

The introduction sets forth the goals and the methodologies of the study. It reviews the previous scholarship on Manuel II Palaiologos and explains the contributions made by this book. While setting the scholarly background of the book, previous studies on Late Byzantine political and socio-economic history, Byzantine literature, Byzantine philosophy and theology are discussed in relation to Manuel's biography. By relying on studies on historical biography writing and some select examples from historical biographies of Western medieval rulers, the metholodology for writing Manuel's biography is established. The sources used in the biography are introduced and their chief characteristics are discussed.