Letters to a Young Novelist by Mario Vargas Llosa

Title: Letters to a Young Novelist
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
Genre: Non-fiction
Written: 1997 (Eng. 2002)
Length: 132 pages
Original in: Spanish

Letters to a Young Novelist is a work of non-fiction in epistolary form, the letters in question addressed to an unnamed aspiring novelist. It is a book only of answers: the young novelist's letters and queries are not printed, though Vargas Llosa pretends they actually do exist, writing in response to specific questions and the like.
Vargas Llosa uses many real-life (or rather real-fiction) examples to explain the most significant aspects of the novel, in short letter-chapters devoted to everything from "Style" to "Shifts and Qualitative Leaps". It is less a how-do manual than a how-done treatise, using examples of familiar texts (often, surprisingly, short stories rather than actual novels) to show what fiction allows for and what can be done in and with the form.
Well read -- and not fixated one one 'right' approach --, Vargas Llosa is a good guide. He is able to explain that even an author whose writing he theoretically doesn't like, like Alejo Carpentier ("taken out of the context of his novels, his prose is exactly the opposite of the kind of writing I admire"), can craft a masterful work (such as Carpentier's The Kingdom of this World, whose "unflagging coherence and its aura of indispensability" make it the masterwork it is).
Vargas Llosa offers a wide array of examples, from Augusto Monterroso's "perfect story", the one-line piece The Dinosaur (which can be found in his collection, Complete Works & Other Stories), to beloved Flaubert, and suggests throughout that exposure to a great deal of fiction (and an openness to a variety of approaches) is among the most useful tools for the aspiring novelist. He admits, in the end, that theory isn't very helpful in the actual writing of a novel -- but does suggest that it's useful in how one considers literature (and this little book is, indeed, ultimately much more a reader's than a writer's guide).
It's all a bit pat and simple, and for those who have read this sort of thing before far too familiar, but Vargas Llosa does convey a great love of (and belief in) literature, making this a sympathetic if not exactly earth-shaking little volume. The epistolary conceit is too artificial -- Rilke's poetic letters should have been the last, not the first in this by now very annoying trend -- and it's a shame Vargas Llosa didn't try to bring the second character (the budding novelist) into the text proper; as is s/he doesn't come to life, and, as a failed fictional invention, detracts a bit from the authority of what Vargas Llosa writes.

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The Trouble with the Nobel Prize in Literature

Why literature prizes have way too much influence over what we read.


I grew up believing that the Nobel Prize in Literature was sort of the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or those Duncan Hines signs that hung in front of decent motels. A Nobel Prize winner was an author you should check out, an author of verified greatness. With time, this reputation began to fray, as I noticed that some less-than-top-drawer writers, such as Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck, had collected this accolade. And some very great writers, such as James Joyce, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Eudora Welty had been ignored. So the Nobel committee’s track record was spotty, to say the least.

Then there was Nobel’s requirement that the prize be given to an author who has produced, in the field of literature, the most outstanding work in an ideal direction. In other words, the author’s work has to be in some way uplifting or improving. This stipulation is so elastic as to be meaningless, but it works a hardship on an author who was just trying to tell a story as best he or she could. It creates a hoop the writer has to jump through, and if you want to see how uncomfortable it could make certain writers, all you have to do is read Faulkner’s Nobel address, which sounds, under the circumstances, like a torture victim repudiating everything he has stood for his whole life.

The big question is, though, why do we place such faith in a committee whose workings, predispositions, and grudges we know almost nothing about? (Nothing personal against today’s winner, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa.) According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the prize for literature is determined by the Swedish Academy. Tenured for life and known as the “The Eighteen” in Sweden, this group of mostly Scandinavian scholars, linguists, and historians often defies expert speculation about their choices.

Of course, the Nobel announcement may tip us to a writer whom we’ve never heard of and should check out. I certainly would never have discovered Yasunari Kawabata when I was a teenager if it hadn’t been for his Nobel Prize. But any serious reader should be doing that anyway and not waiting for some remote body to direct us to the overlooked authors of the world.

Booksellers and publishers will say that prizes help sell books, and so we should support prizes. I see their point, and I understand that readers need all the help they can get when confronted with thousands of new titles a year (although I want to say that publishers could do us all, readers and writers alike, a huge favor by being more selective about what they publish in the first place).

Prizes do sell books. They can make reputations. At the same time, the Nobel and all the other literary prizes encourage a kind of laziness among readers. They create a false sense of what’s great, and that’s a decision that individual readers ought to be making on their own. They also endow literature with a sort of horse-race mentality, with winners and losers and also-rans. But literature isn’t a race or a game, no matter how much Hemingway talked about getting into the ring with Tolstoy. Literature is its own reward.

At the risk of contradicting myself, I do like the atmosphere that surrounds these selections in England, where bookies run a line on the favorites for both the Nobel and the Man Booker prizes. But least the English have a sense of humor about the whole thing, saying, in effect, OK, if it’s a contest, let’s treat it like a contest and make some money off of it. That may be crass, but at least it’s honest. But even the English system, ultimately, leaves me cold. But then again, I’m not a betting man. [source]

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An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa

The 2010 Nobel Prize winner described his work on behalf of individual liberty in 2007.


'This is a story that often repeated itself," Mario Vargas Llosa says. "If a father was a businessman, he was a man who had to be complicit with the dictatorship. It was the only way to prosper, right? And what happens is that the son discovers it, the son is young, restless, idealistic, believes in justice and liberty, and he finds out that his vile father is serving a dictatorship that assassinates, incarcerates, censors and is corrupted to the bone."

Mr. Vargas Llosa could have plucked this scenario from his personal recollections of living under dictatorial rule in Peru. But he tells this story to make a more universal point: Dictatorships poison everything in their grasp, from political institutions right down to relationships between fathers and sons.

When I meet Mr. Vargas Llosa in his home in Lima, I am not surprised to find that the world-famous novelist is a natural storyteller. He speaks to me in Spanish, gripping his black-rimmed glasses in his hand and occasionally waving them around for emphasis.

Mr. Vargas Llosa's bold ideas and expressive language may make him one of Latin America's finest writers -- "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," "The Time of the Hero" and "Conversation in the Cathedral" are just a few of his classic works -- but those same traits didn't necessarily serve him well at the polls. After running for president of Peru in 1990 and losing to Alberto Fujimori, Mr. Vargas Llosa decided to devote his full attention to writing. He now lives in Lima for about three months of the year, spending the rest of his time in Europe.

"I am not going to participate in professional politics again," he says. And he doesn't have to. Mr. Vargas Llosa has found an effective way to expose the destructive nature of dictatorships, while underscoring the importance of individual liberty and free will. He just picks up his pen. "Words are acts," he says, echoing Jean-Paul Sartre. "Through writing, one can change history."

During the 1990 presidential campaign Mr. Varga Llosa emphasized the need for a market economy, privatization, free trade, and above all, the dissemination of private property. He didn't exactly receive a welcome reception. "It was a very different era, because to speak of private property, private enterprise, the market -- it was sacrilegious," he says. "I was fairly vulnerable in that campaign," he continues, "because I didn't lie. I said exactly what we were going to do. It was a question of principle and also . . . I thought it would be impossible to do liberal, radical reforms without having the mandate to do them."

Now, almost 20 years later, the landscape looks very different. Mr. Vargas Llosa explains that he was propelled into politics when then president Alan Garcia, at the time a socialist and a populist, attempted to nationalize the banks. Today he is running the country again, but "now, the same Alan Garcia is the champion of capitalism in Peru!" Mr. Vargas Llosa laughs merrily. "It's funny, no?"

He is relatively upbeat about Latin America today: "I'm not as pessimistic as others who believe that Latin America has returned to the time of populism, leftism." The region has its problems, to be sure, one major one coming from Caracas in the form of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But according to Mr. Vargas Llosa, perhaps what is most remarkable is what Mr. Chavez has not been able to do.

"We have a big problem with Chavez," Mr. Vargas Llosa admits. "He's a demagogue and a 19th century socialist. He is a destabilizing force for democracy in Latin America, but what he thought would be so easy hasn't been so easy. There has been a lot of resistance."

One of Mr. Chavez's major errors was his refusal last month to renew the license of popular Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV. "International hostility was enormous," Mr. Vargas Llosa notes. "For me, most important was that the protests in Venezuela were very strong, in particular the sectors that were once very sympathetic to him, for example the students in the Central University of Venezuela, not only the students in the private universities."

It is such infringements of free speech that highlight why in places like Latin America, reading a good novel can be much more than just a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. "I think in countries where basic problems are still unresolved, where a society remains so traumatized by deep conflicts -- as in Latin America or in third world countries in general -- the novel is not only a form of entertainment, but it substitutes for something that these societies are not accustomed to seeing -- information, for example," Mr. Vargas Llosa says. "If you live in a country where there is nothing comparable to free information, often literature becomes the only way to be more or less informed about what's going on." Literature can also be a form of resistance, perhaps the only way to express discontent in the absence of political parties.

This all sounds true enough, but in a dictatorship, wouldn't literature be censored as well? "In undeveloped countries censorship doesn't reach that point of subtlety, as it did in Spain for example," Mr. Vargas Llosa explains. "Because in undeveloped countries, the dictators are, well, functioning illiterates that don't think that literature can be dangerous."

To give one example, Mr. Vargas Llosa's first novel, "The Time of the Hero," about life at a military school in Lima, was burned publicly in Peru by a military dictatorship in the 1960s. But the authorities apparently didn't find the book enough of a political threat to ban it outright, and in the end it was Mr. Vargas Llosa who reaped the benefits of the public burning. "It became a best seller!" He exclaims, laughing.

There is another disturbing current in Mr. Vargas Llosa's work that is less often discussed -- mistreatment of women, ranging from disrespect to outright violence. The abuses are particularly horrifying in "The Feast of the Goat," a novel based on the life of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who terrorized the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. Mr. Vargas Llosa describes traveling to the Dominican Republic and being stunned to hear stories of peasants offering their own daughters as "gifts" to the lustful tyrant. Trujillo and his sons, he tells me, could abuse any woman of any social class with absolute impunity. The situation in the Dominican Republic, which he refers to as a "laboratory of horrors," may have tended toward the extreme, but it underscores a larger trend: "The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship."

Mr. Vargas Llosa discovered that this phenomenon was hardly limited to Latin America. "I went to Iraq after the invasion," he tells me. "When I heard stories about the sons of Saddam Hussein, it seemed like I was in the Dominican Republic, hearing stories about the sons of Trujillo! That women would be taken from the street, put in automobiles and simply presented like objects . . . The phenomenon was very similar, even with such different cultures and religions." He concludes: "Brutality takes the same form in dictatorial regimes."

Did this mean that Mr. Vargas Llosa supported the invasion of Iraq? "I was against it at the beginning," he says. But then he went to Iraq and heard accounts of life under Saddam Hussein. "Because there has been so much opposition to the war, already one forgets that this was one of the most monstrous dictatorships that humanity has ever seen, comparable to that of Hitler, or Stalin." He changed his mind about the invasion: "Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt."

Mr. Vargas Llosa's broad, visceral hatred of dictatorships in part stems from personal experience, in particular growing up in 1950s Peru under the dictatorship of Manuel Odria. "All the political parties were prohibited, there was strict censorship of radio and the press," he explains. "The university had many professors in exile and many student prisoners . . . this is the atmosphere in which a boy of my generation entered adulthood."

This period is the backdrop for "Conversation in the Cathedral," which Mr. Vargas Llosa said would be the work that he would rescue from a fire. The brilliant, four-volume novel rarely addresses Odria directly, rather zooming in on relationships between ordinary Peruvians from all levels of society. With unembellished prose, Mr. Vargas Llosa plunges you right into the heart of a nation without hope. "It's a novel in which I wanted to show what I lived through in through in those years, how the dictatorship didn't limit itself to censorship or prohibiting political life, no!" Mr. Vargas Llosa tells me. "The dictatorship created a system that impregnated every act of life."

And herein lies the power of Mr. Vargas Llosa's work: He finds that tyranny takes its toll in places we hadn't even thought to look. As for the value of freedom, perhaps he puts it best in "The Feast of the Goat": "It must be nice. Your cup of coffee or glass of rum must taste better, the smoke of your cigar, a swim in the ocean on a hot day, the movie you see on Saturday, the merengue on the radio, everything must leave a more pleasurable sensation in your body and spirit when you had what Trujillo had taken away from Dominicans 31 years ago: free will."

We begin to wrap up our interview. We both drink red wine. A room nearby houses Mr. Vargas Llosa's private library -- I notice that some of the volumes are bound in leather. He tells me that there are more than 18,000 books. His collection is clearly a point of pride, but it is also a tangible representation of his belief in the power of words. Or as he would say it: "I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated."

Ms. Parker was an assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal. This interview originally appeared in the June 23, 2007 edition of the Journal.

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Literature and Liberty in Mario Vargas Llosa's Novels

The work of Mario Vargas Llosa, in its purest essence, is borne of a fundamental indignation -- a radical criticism of the many faces of oppression and fanaticism. There was the oppression of military juntas in his first novels, the social injustice and political corruption in Conversación en La Catedral, the religious fanaticism of The War of the End of the World, the wretched guerrilla utopianism in Historia de Mayta, and, of course, the authoritarian caudillismo of Rafael Trujillo, the paradigm of a Latin American Dictator, in La fiesta del Chivo. Yet in all of this, what Vargas Llosa's writing is not -- and never has been -- is literature with an argument. Rather, Vargas Llosa offers the world a sophisticated artistic re-creation of the extremes and vices of human misery, written in order to reveal that reality -- and exorcize it.



Then there is the playful side -- and it's thrilling in his literature, having made countless men and women laugh and smile worldwide -- which seems an oasis of liberty or a game that Vargas Llosa uses to replenish the soul after the tremendous effort required by his libertarian novels. Through affectionate dreams and reveries, Vargas Llosa's novels escape his other demons.

Vargas Llosa is the opposite of a "conservative" writer. He is a liberal intellectual. And it is today, faced with the currents of intolerance that persist in Latin America, that we will at last vindicate the legitimacy of a liberal democratic telling of history. It is a liberal project, a civilizing project par excellence; it is what founded our nations, and it is what Vargas Llosa brings to life in his life and his works. Faced with authoritarian power, the liberal soul makes no distinctions. Vargas Llosa, it's true, believed in the Cuban Revolution and did so for a decade, because he believed it was his fate to be a liberator of men. But he also had the courage to tear himself away from that same revolution when he became aware of its irreversible totalitarian direction. With the same substance and conviction, he has criticized military dictators and corrupt governments around the globe. It was he who baptized Mexico's PRI as "the perfect dictatorship." And no novel can outdo his treatment of the Dominican Republic's Trujillo regime, with his combination of literary excellence and radical moral critique.

It was not only in novels that Vargas Llosa defended liberty. He has also done so in his columns in El País and Reforma. As an essayist and reporter, he was like a young soldier fighting for liberty. And indeed, he often carried himself straight to the mouth of the wolf (to Baghdad, Gaza, Congo, Haiti, Darfur). He has never ceased to draw criticism for his works. But the voice that counts to him is his internal voice -- and the imperative of truth.

His triumph this Thursday is also that of Peruvian literature. This tragic and diverse country has finally won the Nobel it deserves. The Spanish language also counts a victory. The Nobel, as almost everyone knows, passed over Jorge Luis Borges, and most thought it would pass over Vargas Llosa as well. With this honor, the Swedish Academy honors not only Vargas Llosa but itself, by returning to a tradition of honoring the best candidates.

And the prize comes at the best possible moment for Latin America. Caudillismo, militarism, redeemer ideology, populism, and fanaticism are all still present in our countries. And yet over the last 20 years, our march toward democracy has been permanent. After Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa has been its staunchest defender.

Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize is an act of justice toward literature and toward liberty. They are two inseparable words. [source]

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Mario Vargas Llosa: a Controversial Latin American Writer

The following is a 2003 interview between Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer and newly crowned Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa.

Mario Vargas Llosa, one of Latin America's biggest writers of all time, has always been one of the least ``politically correct'' intellectuals in the region.

He broke ranks with Cuba decades before his colleagues on the left discovered that Fidel Castro was a dictator, denounced Mexico's previous semi-authoritarian government as ``the perfect dictatorship, `` and most recently lashed out against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori when most of Latin America was continuing to tolerate his autocratic ways.

You can agree or disagree with Vargas Llosa, but you cannot take his opinions lightly. He has always gone against the conventional wisdom of the day in Latin America, and he has been right more often than not.

TV INTERVIEW

Earlier this week, after his weekend visit to South Florida to speak at the Miami Book Fair International, I taped a television interview with Vargas Llosa, 67.

Among the highlights:

Q: You recently returned from a two-week reporting trip to Iraq. Can President Bush bring democracy to that country, or is that a crazy illusion?

A: To think that Iraq will one day become a democratic country is not a utopia. At this point, the methods to bring about democracy are debatable. Only in very exceptional cases can one accept democracy to be brought about by an army, but it has happened in Germany, for instance.

Q: But in post-war Germany, there were virtually no killings of American soldiers. Are Iraqis against the U.S. presence there?

A: Most Iraqis are happy that the Baath party and Saddam Hussein have fallen. That was one of the conclusions I arrived at during my trip. It doesn't mean that they are happy with a foreign occupation, but I do think that there are, nowadays, some possibilities of a modernization and democratization that weren't there during the Baath dictatorship.

Q: Do you think Bush and his allies truly believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

A: I think the governments knew that there was no definitive evidence, but they thought it was the most effective way to ``sell'' the war. They made a mistake. It would have been ethically and politically more acceptable to say that this was a bloody dictatorship comparable to [Germany's Adolf] Hitler or that of [Russia's Joseph] Stalin, which was not only destroying the people of Iraq but was also a terrible threat to its neighbors.

Q: You are now spending a few months in Washington, as a visiting professor at Georgetown University. From what you see in America, do you think Bush will be reelected?

A: I have the impression that U.S. public opinion is moving away from that massive support for Bush's policies toward a more critical stand. For the first time, one can nowadays see a possibility that Bush can be defeated.

Q: A few years ago you made big headlines by proclaiming that Mexico was ``a perfect dictatorship.'' Is Mexico in a never-ending political transition now?

A: Fortunately, I was wrong. It wasn't so perfect. From a perfect dictatorship, it changed to an imperfect democracy. And that is a great progress. There is freedom of expression, political freedoms . . . [Mexican President Vicente] Fox has not satisfied the big expectations that were placed on him. The difficulties he has faced have been huge, but there has also been a shortage of energy, of leadership, to carry out the reforms. That's what is keeping the country paralyzed.

Q: How would you describe Argentina's President Néstor Kirchner?

A: I would describe Kirchner as a demagogue. I don't agree with the [Argentine government's] perception that [former President Carlos] Menem's policies were ultra-free market reforms. They were not. They were a smoke-screen for huge corruption and influence peddling, which naturally had very negative results. And that frustration has moved the Argentine people to turn from the Menem demagoguery to the Kirchner demagoguery. I'm afraid that the results will be equally catastrophic.

Q: And Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva?

A: I used to perceive him as a populist, a dangerous demagogue. [But] he has changed significantly. If Lula becomes Brazil's Tony Blair, that would be a welcome phenomenon. It would be about time for Latin America, but it remains to be seen.

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Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa: Watching the Dictators

Mario Vargas Llosa has spent his life fighting totalitarianism - both on and off the page

Obs: What was the inspiration for The Feast of the Goat ?

MVL: In 1975, I went to the Dominican Republic for eight months during the shooting of a film based on my novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. It was during this period I heard and read about Trujillo. I had the idea of a novel set with this historical background. It's a long project. I went many times to the Dominican Republic to read the papers, and also to interview many people: victims, neutral people and collaborators of Trujillo.

Obs: To what degree is the book really about Alberto Fujimori?


MVL: Well, I think it's a book about Trujillo, but if you write about a dictator you are writing about all dictators, and about totalitarianism. I was writing not only about Trujillo but about an emblematic figure and something that has been experienced in many other societies.

Obs: Particularly in Latin America.

MVL: When I was at university in the Fifties, Latin America was full of dictators. Trujillo was the emblematic figure because, of course, of his cruelty, corruption, extravagance, and theatricalities. He pushed to the extreme trends which were quite common to most dictators of the time.

Obs: The corruption of power.

MVL: Dictators are not natural catastrophes. That's something I wanted to describe: how dictators are made with the collaboration of many people, and sometimes even with the collaboration of their victims.

Obs: Do you have insights into dictatorship from your political experience?

MVL: My three years in politics was very instructive about the way in which the appetite for political power can destroy a human mind, destroy principles and values and transform people into little monsters.

Obs: This novel is written partly from a woman's point of view. Was that a problem?

MVL: A challenge, not a problem. I wanted a woman to be one of the protagonists, because I think women were the worst victims of Trujillo. To his authoritarianism you have to add machismo. Trujillo used sex not only for pleasure but also as an instrument of power. And in this he went far further than many, many other dictators. He went to bed, for example, with the wives of his collaborators.

Obs: Like a Shakespeare play.

MVL: In a way. Coriolanus is a fantastic play about this subject.

Obs: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

MVL: It started not as writing but as reading. I learnt to read when I was five and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me.

Obs: What kind of things did you read?

MVL: I read novels of adventure. At that time children read not comics but texts. I remember the magazines. I started to write continuations of these stories. Because I was frustrated that they'd finished. Sometimes I wanted to change the endings. It started like this kind of play.

Obs: Like the plot of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

MVL: That's right. When I entered university I knew that what I would like to do is become a writer. But at that time, in a society like mine, it was very difficult to decide to become only a writer... Well, what I tried to do, I'm going to make a living doing other things and literature would become my main interest, but my life would be taken by...

Obs: Journalism?

MVL: Yeah. But when I came to Europe in 1958 I decided I'm going to try to be a writer and consecrate my time and my energies to writing. I would survive doing marginal jobs. That was a very important moment in my life.

Obs: Quite a number of your books have got you into trouble.

MVL: The writer's job is to write with rigour, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that's part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

Obs: Does that reflect the more public role of the writer in Latin America?

MVL: I think the contribution of writers to the public debate is something that can make a difference. If culture is completely cut from what is going on it becomes very artificial.

Obs: Is this love of controversy in your nature or intrinsic to your subjects?

MVL: My books don't fit very easily into stereotypes. I think that is one explanation. I have tried always to be an independent writer. That doesn't mean that I have not been wrong. Probably I've been wrong many times.

Obs: What made you go into politics?

MVL: Well, I always was involved in politics, but as an intellectual. In the late Eighties I thought it was necessary to have a practical commitment with politics... it was the wrong decision.

Obs: Were you shocked by the failure of your ideas to be taken up?

MVL: Well, I was, but it was worse than that. In a democratic election you win or lose, but what happened afterwards was very confused. Fujimori won the election. Then what he did was to initiate some of the reforms I was offering. And for many years Fujimori was popular. As Trujillo and many dictators are. This was very shocking.

Obs: Do you think you've put that phase of your life behind you? You've written A Fish In The Water.

MVL: Oh, absolutely. Literature has this extraordinary power. You write about something and even if it is the worst experience, I think you achieve a catharsis, and are completely cured.

Obs: How much time do you spend in London?

MVL: I manage to spend at least three months a year in London.

Obs: You are known in this country for your approval of Mrs Thatcher.

MVL: It's very sad what has happened with Mrs Thatcher. When she took power she really made an extraordinary impact on British life, society, politics. But then I am afraid she will be remembered more as a very bitter Conservative fighting against Europe, and saying absurd things about Europe. What has happened in Britain is very interesting, because I am convinced that the best disciple of Mrs Thatcher is Tony Blair, who has been following the kind of reforms that Mrs Thatcher started.

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Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. He is author of many acclaimed novels, including Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982)

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/apr/07/fiction.features

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Mario Vargas Llosa stirs controversy in Peru

While known internationally for his writing, 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Mario Vargas Llosa has also been a highly controversial political figure in his native Peru.

His political identity as a right-wing maverick began in the late 1980s when he led a mass movement against a decision by President Alan García, then in his first term (1985-1990), to nationalize the country’s banks.

That movement morphed into a political party, Fredemo, with Mr. Vargas Llosa at the helm. Many of Peru’s current political elite got their start with the movement and Vargas Llosa was easily expected to capture that country’s presidency in 1990. The novelist-turned-politician, however, did not count on the emergence of an unknown math teacher, Alberto Fujimori.

Mr. Fujimori came from nowhere to easily beat Vargas Llosa. Fujimori co-opted the economic and political recipes that Vargas Llosa espoused on the campaign trail.

Vargas Llosa became a leading international voice against Fujimori after the 1992 decision to close Congress and the judiciary and rule by decree. He was one of the few people denouncing Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000 and is now serving a 25-year prison sentence on human rights abuse charges.
Politics and the prize

Antonio Cisneros, a Peruvian poet who recently won one of Latin America’s top literature prizes, says Vargas Llosa’s politics is likely why it took the Nobel committee so many years before recognizing his achievements.

“Mario has deserved this prize for many years," says Mr. Cisneros, who recently won the Pablo Neruda Iberian-American poetry prize in Chile. "The only thing that kept him on the short list and not among the winners probably had to do with his politics. He has never kept his opinions quiet,”

Alejandro Guerrero, dean of the journalism school at the Technological University of Peru, says Vargas Llosa would have captured the world’s top literature prize years ago if he had not been an outspoken defender of economic liberalism.

“Vargas Llosa should have been awarded the Nobel Prize much earlier if he had kept the left-wing tradition of other Latin American writers,” such as Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, says Mr. Guerrero.

While living and working outside of Peru for years, Vargas Llosa has maintained close ties with his home country, most recently agreeing to head a committee to build a Memory Museum that would explore the years of political violence in the country unleashed by two communist insurgencies: the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).
Vargas Llosa's political clout

The museum has been a sore spot for a large swath of Peru’s right wing, which identifies with Vargas Llosa economically but not politically since the Fujimori years. Fujimori’s political allies, including his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, who is running for president, oppose the museum.

Vargas Llosa is still a strong supporter of the museum, but in September he abruptly quit as head of the organizing committee when the government – again run by a newly reelected Mr. Garcia (2006-present) – passed legislation redefining how crimes against humanity would be tried.

In a letter to Garcia, Vargas Llosa said the legislation was a thinly veiled effort to provide amnesty for human rights violators.

Vargas Llosa's resignation is widely credited with ouster of the defense minister who wrote the questionable law and the government’s decision to ask Congress to repeal it within two weeks of its passage.

Garcia said there was no bad blood between him and Vargas Llosa, announcing earlier this week that another well-known local icon, painter Fernando de Syzlo, would head the committee. Mr. de Syzlo and Vargas Llosa are contemporaries and friends. His selection was interpreted as a nod to Vargas Llosa.

Garcia said today, in a public statement recognizing Vargas Llosa’s win, that he chose him for the museum committee for his “universal objectivity.” [source]

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Mario Vargas Llosa: The 2010 Winner of Nobel Literature Prize

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Spanish-speaking world who once ran for president in his homeland, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.

The Swedish Academy said it honored the 74-year-old author "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."

Vargas Llosa has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including "Conversation in the Cathedral" and "The Green House." In 1995, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor.

His international breakthrough came with the 1960s novel "The Time of The Hero," which builds on his experiences from the Peruvian military academy Leoncio Prado. The book was considered controversial in his homeland and a thousand copies were burnt publicly by officers from the academy.

Vargas Llosa is the first South American winner of the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) Nobel Prize in literature since it was awarded to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982.

In the previous six years, the academy rewarded five Europeans and one Turk, sparking criticism that it was too euro-centric.

Born in Arequipa, Peru, Vargas Llosa grew up with his grandparents in Bolivia after his parents divorced, the academy said. The family moved back to Peru in 1946 and he later went to military school before studying literature and law in Lima and Madrid.

In 1959, he moved to Paris where he worked as a language teacher and as a journalist for Agence France-Presse and the national television service of France.

He has lectured and taught at a number of universities in the U.S., South America and Europe. He is teaching this semester at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J.

In 1990, he ran for the presidency but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori. In 1994 he was elected to the Spanish Academy, where he took his seat in 1996.

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