Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (
born March 28, 1936) is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and recipient of the 2010
Nobel Prize in Literature.
Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and
essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation. Some
critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and
worldwide audience than any other writer of the
Latin American Boom.
Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the
Swedish Academy
said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of
structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's
resistance, revolt, and defeat".
Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as
The Time of the Hero (
La ciudad y los perros, literally
The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966
),
The Green House (
La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental
Conversation in the Cathedral (
Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He writes prolifically across an array of
literary genres, including
literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.
He is the person who, in 1990, "coined the phrase that circled the globe",declaring on Mexican television, "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship", a
statement which became an adage during the following decade.
Many of Vargas Llosa's works are influenced by the writer's perception of
Peruvian
society and his own experiences as a native Peruvian. Increasingly,
however, he has expanded his range, and tackled themes that arise from
other parts of the world. Another change over the course of his career
has been a shift from a style and approach associated with literary
modernism, to a sometimes playful postmodernism.
Like many Latin
American authors, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout
his career; over the course of his life, he has gradually moved from the
political left towards
liberalism or
neoliberalism, a definitively more
conservative political position. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of
Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with the Cuban
dictator and his
authoritarian regime. He ran for the
Peruvian presidency in 1990 with the center-right
Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) coalition, advocating
neoliberal reforms, but lost the election to
Alberto Fujimori.
Vargas Llosa's style encompasses historical material as well as his own personal experiences.
For example, in his first novel,
The Time of the Hero,
his own experiences at the Leoncio Prado military school informed his
depiction of the corrupt social institution which mocked the moral
standards it was supposed to uphold.
Furthermore, the corruption of the book's school is a reflection of the
corruption of Peruvian society at the time the novel was written.
Vargas Llosa frequently uses his writing to challenge the inadequacies
of society, such as demoralization and oppression by those in political
power towards those who challenge this power. One of the main themes he
has explored in his writing is the individual's struggle for freedom
within an oppressive reality
For example, his two-volume novel
Conversation in the Cathedral is based on the tyrannical dictatorship of Peruvian President
Manuel A. Odría.
The protagonist, Santiago, rebels against the suffocating dictatorship
by participating in the subversive activities of leftist political
groups.
In addition to themes such as corruption and oppression, Vargas Llosa's second novel,
The Green House,
explores "a denunciation of Peru's basic institutions", dealing with
issues of abuse and exploitation of the workers in the brothel by
corrupt military officers.
Many
of Vargas Llosa's earlier novels were set in Peru, while in more recent
work he has expanded to other regions of Latin America, such as Brazil
and the Dominican Republic.
His responsibilities as a writer and lecturer have allowed him to
travel frequently and led to settings for his novels in regions outside
of Peru
. The War of the End of the World was his first major work set outside Peru. Though the plot deals with historical events of the
Canudos
revolt against the Brazilian government, the novel is not based
directly on historical fact; rather, its main inspiration is the
non-fiction account of those events published by Brazilian writer
Euclides da Cunha in 1902.
The Feast of the Goat, based on the dictatorship of
Rafael Trujillo, takes place in the
Dominican Republic;
in preparation for this novel, Vargas Llosa undertook a comprehensive study of Dominican history.
The novel was characteristically
realist,
and Vargas Llosa underscores that he "respected the basic facts, [. .
.] I have not exaggerated", but at the same time he points out "It's a
novel, not a history book, so I took many, many liberties."
One of Vargas Llosa's more recent novels,
The Way to Paradise (
El paraíso en la otra esquina), is set largely in France and
Tahiti.
Based on the biography of former social reformer
Flora Tristan, it demonstrates how Flora and
Paul Gauguin were unable to find paradise, but were still able to inspire followers to keep working towards a socialist
utopia.
Unfortunately, Vargas Llosa was not as successful in transforming these
historical figures into fiction. Some critics, such as Barbara Mujica,
argue that
The Way to Paradise lacks the "audacity, energy, political vision, and narrative genius" that was present in his previous works.
Suddenly, after some medical exams, Max is diagnosed with heart
disease, which is incurable by a transplant because Max's heart is so
big. Sammy decides to find Lilliana, and tries to convince her to meet
Max again, but she rejects the invitation. Sammy then convinces his wife
to take the role of Lilliana and after some words, Max asks her for a
kiss.
