"Ciphers of History" is a collection of seven classic essays written by the eminent Latin Americanist Enrico Mario Santi, compiled here in a single volume for the first time. Santi covers a broad range of topics in Latin American poetry, narrative, film, and intellectual history, with one brief excursion into Peninsular subject-matter: the Spanish Generation of 98's response to Spain's loss of Cuba in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The collection is defined by a bracing critique of dominant trends in current critical practice, and advocacy of an alternative methodology focused on the retrieval of local knowledge. Santi stresses reading as opposed to theory, and employs the notion of the "cipher" as a figure for "the ultimate ambivalence of interpretation." The essays are tied together by this common approach, which acts as both incisive challenge and demanding blue-print for the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies.