The Maria Nicolau wrote a fantastic article a few months ago in which he told us about the working day that Haruki Murakami had described in an interview for the literary magazine The Paris ReviewMurakami gets up early in the morning, works for five or six hours, and in the afternoon, runs or swims, reads, listens to music, and finally goes to bed at nine at night. Nicolau wonders, quite rightly, how the author stays alive without macaroni, that is, without someone to cook for him, wash his underwear, pay his bills, buy his groceries, and the long list of vital logistics a writer would need to be able to work on his fiction or not die of cold, inani. We know that Harry Potter could dedicate himself exclusively to magic thanks to Dobby and the rest of the house elves. Nicolau reveals to us that Murakami can do so, surprise to everyone, thanks to his wife, Yoko Murakami.

The recent death of the writer Mario Vargas Llosa brings to light a recurring theme in the history of culture: the controversial and probably also debatable ideological aspect of a fiction author (or painter, musician, singer, sculptor, etc.), as opposed to the universally recognized quality and merit of his work. In situations like these, reaching an agreement is difficult, always depending on the ideological or political perspective from which one views it. For example: We read Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and we were captivated by a kind of aesthetic miracle, by what it revealed to us about war, and above all, by how it revealed it. But one day we learned that Céline had distinguished himself as a fierce anti-Semite in the midst of the Nazi occupation. The dilemma immediately arose: should we continue reading him or not? Some dismissed him, others didn't. The author of this article was one of the former. But no one can deny, not even I, the transformation that the French language underwent in the wake of the French writer's powerful and subversive writing.

"And this is news?" is the question we often see in the comments of news stories about tabloids and pop culture. And, obviously, these are not news stories that make the front pages of newspapers, but they are issues we often discuss with friends or family around a table or at the bar. And this is what we do in this podcast: we go to a local to review some news from the social chronicle that serves not only to keep up with the most important gossip, but also to talk about love, friendship, and breakups.

They find it funny, even mocking, that so many women spend their afternoons doing what they contemptuously call "adult extracurricular activities." And it's true that reading clubs, conferences, workshops at community centers, and courses on a wide variety of subjects are mostly supported by an attendance almost always made up of women of a certain age. Men who prefer to devote their remaining vital energy to watching a couple of dozen children in shorts chasing a ball don't wonder how women behave this way, how they have acquired this hyperactivity. First, because they have no interest in little boys running around on the grass, and second, because many of them are part of a generation that has never been able to do what they wanted, that has gradually put aside, over the years and decades, all those interests that weren't strictly useful for supporting family life and other work. Some complain about this massive and normalized theft. One of them expressed it with reasonable indignation: "Now I realize that I've been deceived my whole life." Others remain silent, leaving their husbands "staring at them on television" (a phrase used by a Valencian feminist when explaining her beginnings in equality associations in the 1970s and how she managed to attend meetings), and have their own time now that they no longer have to care for children, grandchildren, parents, or even friends.

Mario Vargas Llosa, who as a man wanted to be president of Peru, dismissively looked down on non-imperial and pre-Columbian languages and was belligerent toward all indigenous demands, including Catalan. But as a writer, he made The Feast of the Goat.

Alongside his celebrated literary works, Mario Vargas Llosa never ceased to participate in public debate through articles, essays, interviews, and lectures. He even became a presidential candidate in his native Peru in 1990, when he was defeated by Alberto Fujimori. As a young man, he had flirted with Castroism, but quickly evolved toward first liberal and then more distinctly conservative positions. His opinions never left anyone indifferent. What follows is a compilation of his most notorious polemics.

When Mario Vargas Llosa He won the Nobel Prize in 2010. In Catalonia, he was best remembered for his five-year stay in Barcelona and as one of the driving forces behind the Latin American boom. He settled in the city in 1970 and stayed until 1974. During that five-year period, the Peruvian author wrote the novel Pantaleón and the visitors (Seix Barral, 1973) and the essay The perpetual orgy (Taurus, 1975), focused on one of the authors he most admired, Gustave Flaubert. "At that time, Barcelona was the cultural capital of Spain, the place where young people from Latin America went. It was where it should be. A cosmopolitan city where Spaniards went when they wanted to hear that they were in Europe," he explained.

This morning, at two thirty, the family of Mario Vargas Losa reported that The writer had died at the age of 89, surrounded by his loved ones and at peace.

Mario 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.