Efraín Kristal is a professor of Spanish and comparative literature at the University of California in Los Angeles. He is author of several books on Latin American literature including Temptation of the Word:The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa and Invisible Work: Borges and Translation. He is also editor of the Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel.
Kristal chaired UCLA’s Department of Comparative Literature from 2002-2005 and is currently the director of the University of California office in Paris. There, his projects include translations into English of philosophical works by Remo Bodei and Yves Michaud and he has been commissioned to co-edit the Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa.