Which Peruvian author wrote the novel 'Los ríos profundos'?

José María Arguedas wrote the Peruvian novel “Los ríos profundos,” first published in Buenos Aires in 1958. The title translates as “The Deep Rivers,” and the book is widely regarded as his masterpiece.

The novel follows Ernesto, an adolescent whose experiences at a Catholic boarding school in Abancay reflect Arguedas’s own childhood in the Peruvian Andes. Through Ernesto’s eyes, the story explores the tension between Indigenous Andean culture and the Spanish-speaking, socially dominant world surrounding it.

Arguedas was both a writer and an anthropologist who knew Quechua as well as Spanish. His prose brings Quechua rhythms, imagery, and concepts into Spanish, helping the novel represent Indigenous experience from a more intimate perspective than earlier indigenist fiction. The rivers, mountains, music, and the magical zumbayllu spinning top all carry cultural and symbolic meaning.

The book won Peru’s Ricardo Palma National Culture Prize in 1959 and is often associated with neo-indigenismo. A common mistake is to assign it to Mario Vargas Llosa, another major Peruvian novelist. Vargas Llosa later wrote influential criticism about Arguedas, but he did not write “Los ríos profundos.”