Mario Vargas Llosa enters the French Academy without ever having written in French

[ad_1]

Author will become a member of the institution this Thursday (9). He is the last survivor of the Latin American ‘boom’ along with the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, the Argentine Julio Cortázar and the Mexicans Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo. Mario Vargas Llosa is the first writer to enter the French Academy without ever having written anything in French Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press Hispano-Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, who on Thursday (9) he will become the first writer to enter the French Academy without ever having written anything in French, he is the last representative of the golden generation of Latin American literature. Japanese writer Murakami will publish his 1st novel in six years A universal writer based on the complex Peruvian reality, Vargas Llosa was part of the so-called Latin American “boom” along with other greats such as the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, the Argentine Julio Cortázar and the Mexican Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo. Admired for his description of social realities in masterpieces of literature such as “A Cidade e os Dogs” or “A Festa do Bode”, on the political level, his liberal positions provoked hostility in an intellectual environment that generally tends to the left. “We, Latin Americans, are dreamers by nature and we have trouble differentiating between the real world and fiction. That’s why we have great musicians, poets, painters and writers, and also such horrible and mediocre rulers,” he said shortly before receive the Nobel Prize in 2010. Born in the city of Arequipa, in southern Peru, on March 28, 1936 into a middle-class family, he was educated by his mother and maternal grandparents in Cochabamba (Bolivia) and later in Peru. After his studies at the Military Academy in Lima, he obtained a degree in letters and, still very young, took his first steps in journalism. He settled in Paris in 1959, where he married his aunt Julia Urquidi, 10 years his senior, and worked in various professions: translator, Spanish teacher and journalist for Agence France-Presse. Years later, he separated from Urquidi and married his first cousin and niece of his ex-wife, Patricia Llosa, with whom he had three children and 50 years of relationship. Vargas Llosa divorced Patricia after starting in 2015, at almost 80 years old, a romance with a well-known figure in the Madrid world, Isabel Preysler, ex-wife of singer Julio Iglesias. Prolific literary career His long literary career took off in 1959, when he published his first book of stories, “The Chiefs”, for which he won the Leopoldo Alas Prize. Afterwards, he gained notoriety with the publication of “A Cidade e Os Cachorros”, in 1963, followed three years later by “A Casa Verde”. His prestige was consolidated with “Conversa no Catedral” (1969). At that time, the Peruvian author already stated that he wanted to continue writing until the last day of his life and he fulfilled his word with the publication of works such as “The Discreet Hero” or “Tempos Asperos”, about the turbulent recent history of Guatemala, which earned him the Francisco Umbral Romance Award. With his works translated into 30 languages, Vargas Llosa has been honored with the Cervantes, Prince of Asturias for Letters, Biblioteca Breve, the Spanish Critics, the Peruvian National Novel Prizes and the Rómulo Gallegos. He obtained Spanish nationality in 1993. Award-winning writer… controversial in politics As a young man, Vargas Llosa felt seduced by Fidel Castro, but in 1971 he broke with the Cuban Revolution because of the case of the poet Heberto Padilla, forced by the regime to make a humiliating public “self-criticism”. He was a candidate for the presidency of Peru in 1990. He was the favorite until the then unknown agronomist Alberto Fujimori, who was elected. After his electoral failure, he returned to writing, from where-said the writer-he should never have left. Even so, he does not remain aloof from the vicissitudes of world politics, attacking in recent years populism, “the disease of democracy”, which includes Chavismo and Castroism, the extreme right and the European radical left and independent nationalism. He had a close friendship with Gabriel García Márquez, which ended abruptly in a messy incident that both preferred not to touch on. “Let biographers deal with that matter,” Vargas Llosa once said.

[ad_2]

Source link