“All my life I have had people like that, that they loved and encouraged me, and they infected their faith when I doubted. Thanks to them and, without a doubt, also, to my stubbornness and some luck, I have been able to dedicate a good part of my time to this passion, vice and wonder that is to write, create a parallel life where we take refuge against adversity, which makes the extraordinary and extraordinary the extraordinary and extraordinary ugly, eternalizes the moment and makes death a passenger show. ”
It is an extract of the speech that Mario Vargas Llosa (Arequipa, Peru, 1936) pronounced in Stockholm, Sweden, in December 2010 in the frame Hispanic speaks and fundamental figure of the Latin American boom, owner of a fertile pen and also one of the opinion figures that had the most echoes in public life.
This was reported via social networks the children of the author, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa, through a joint statement:
“With deep pain, we make public that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, has died today in Lima, surrounded by his family and in peace. His departure will sad With your instructions.
An invaluable legacy in letters
With its departure, Vargas Llosa closes a vast body of narrative, storytelling, poetic, theatrical and journalistic work built over more than 70 years, from his first university works, such as the base essay for an interpretation of Rubén Darío, whose base was his university thesis presented in 1958, with just 22 years, until his latest novel I dedicate my silence (2023), passing through pillars Hispanic, such as the city and the dogs (1963), La Casa Verde (1966), conversation in the Cathedral (1969), considered as one of the telling total novels of our language; Lituma in Los Andes (1993), The autobiographical El Fish in the water (1993), The Chivo Fiesta (2000), The Dream of Celta (2010), Five Corinas (2016) and RECIOUS TIMES (2019), to mention a handful.
The Peruvian -Spanish author was worthy of practically all the most important awards for literary construction in the world. Of course, the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Miguel de Cervantes 1994 Spanish Literature Prize and the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters 1986, as well as the Romulo Gallegos 1967, the Planet and the International Menéndez Pelayo, both in 1993.
He was also distinguished as a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language in 1977 and the Royal Spanish Academy since 1994. Likewise, in 1985 he was awarded the Legion of Honor of the Government of France in 1985, and only in 2023 he took a seat in the French Academy; In 2010, he was invised to the order of the arts and letters of Peru and in March 2011, the Mexican government granted him the order of the Aztec Águila.
He was given the Honoris Causa doctorate by Yale, Harvard, Oxford, La Sorbonne, Simón Bolivar, UNAM and Carlos III universities in Madrid, to mention some.
In public life
From the city and the dogs was consecrated as one of the fundamental figures of the Boom of Hispanic American literature. Like other authors of that current, his work broke with the channels of the traditional description by assuming the innovations of the foreign narrative, and adopting techniques such as the inner monologue, the plurality of points of view or the chronological fragmentation, usually placed at the service of a crude realism.
In 1990 he participated as a candidate for the Presidency of Peru for the central-right-right political coalition (Fredemo). After two fought electoral processes (first and second round), he loses the elections and returns to London, where he resumed his literary activity.
At that time he published the truth of lies (1990), an essay that is entitled to a preferred phrases of the author in relation to literature: “The truth of lies”, it brings together essays on 25 novels and stories by different authors of the twentieth century. In March 1993 he obtained Spanish nationality, without giving up the Peruvian.
