Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize winner for literature and figurehead of the Latin American boom, dies.
The Spanish-Peruvian author received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, also won the Planeta Prize, and was a member of the French Academy since 2023.
BarcelonaMario Vargas Llosa died this Sunday in Lima (Peru) at the age of 89. The Spanish-Peruvian writer Nobel Prize in Literature He died "surrounded by his family and in peace," according to a message posted on social media to his children. "His farewell will sadden his relatives, friends and readers around the world, but we hope that they will find solace, as we did, in the fact that he lived a long, varied and fruitful life, and that he left behind a body of work that will outlive him," the prolific author's children noted. They also announced that the farewell ceremony will be held in strict privacy, without any public ceremony.
With a long and established career as a novelist, Vargas Llosa (Arequipa, Peru, 1936) also wrote essays and plays, and was awarded prizes such as the Cervantes Prize, the Prince of Asturias Prize, the PEN/Nabokov Prize, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize. He collaborated as a journalist with various media outlets in Peru, France, and Spain, including The Country. He also taught at Queen Mary College in London, worked as a translator for UNESCO alongside Julio Cortázar, was president of the International PEN Club and a member of the Royal Peruvian Academy of Language, as well as the Spanish Academy.
As a novelist, he won the Planeta Prize for Lituma in the Andes (Planeta, 1993). It began with The city and the dogs (Seix Barral, 1963), winner of the Biblioteca Breve Prize and the Critics' Prize, with which he was part of the so-called Latin American Boom along with Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes, a successful phenomenon of a series of authors who broke with the literary conventions of the time. His second novel, The green house (Seix Barral, 1966), he received the Critics' Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Award. Since then, his work has been extensive: Conversation in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the writer, The War of the End of the World, History of Mayta, Who killed Palomino Molero?, The Feast of the Goat, Paradise on the other corner, The discreet hero and Tough times are some of the most notable titles.
"I learned to read when I was 5, in Brother Justiniano's class. It's the most important thing that ever happened to me," he said upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 2010, in a tribute to his childhood, which included the adventures of Captain Nemo, D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, and Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean. He also mentioned Faulkner, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Joanot Martorell as role models. There were words for his native Peru, where he set many of his stories, "a country that doesn't have one identity because it has them all." He also spoke of France, where he came into contact with the greatest intellectual circles, and of Barcelona, "a much-loved city that experienced the opportunities afforded by the weakening of the Franco regime like no other."
"Fiction is essential for the continued existence of civilization," said Vargas Llosa, and it is thanks to literature that "civilization is much freer and fairer than when the first storytellers began to enliven our lives with fables," he added.
Against Catalan
He ideological aspect Vargas Llosa's work has been controversial and his statements against Catalan are widely known. From lamenting that Tirant lo Blanc was written in Catalan to saying that Catalan nationalism is a toxic ideology that has been inoculated into education: his speeches and interventions in the media have unleashed Catalanophobia, especially in recent years, and one example of this was the writing of the prologue to the book. Long live tabarnia by Albert Boadella, in which he said gems such as that the Process was "a coup plot" that wanted to "regress" Spain to "a third-world country." Or that "an independent Catalonia would be a much smaller, very marginal country, governed by fanatics."
In fact, the Nobel laureate had already flirted with politics. He took advantage of any opportunity to recount and deny his communist youth, and made an unsuccessful attempt at politics in Peru, when he founded the right-wing Freedom Movement, which failed to convince the electorate and was thwarted by Alberto Fujimori's victory. Finally, Vargas Llosa—after a brief rapprochement with Ciutadans—ended up sympathizing with the Popular Party and publicly supporting Pablo Casado.
Divorced and in a relationship with Isabel Presley for eight years, he reappeared with his ex-wife. Patricia Llosa and their children to attend the admission ceremony at the French Academy in February 2023. The Academy selected him as a member despite having no published work in French, being over the age limit, and feeling insecure about his level of French, a fact that drew criticism from some academics.