Mario Vargas Llosa

‘We waited greedily for his novels’: Mario Vargas Llosa, a revolutionary of Spanish-language fiction

His breakthrough book was deemed too inflammatory to be taught in my school, and was burned by authorities, but this Peruvian firebrand would reveal himself to be a man of contradictions

Alberto Manguel

Monday 14 April 2025

The early 1960s was, for my generation in Argentina, an age of discovery when, in our mid-teens, we learned about sex, metaphysics, the Beatles, Ezra Pound, Che Guevara, Fellini’s films, and the new literature of Latin America. In the bookstore around the corner from my school, there began to appear novels with black-and-white photographs on the dust jackets whose Spanish-language authors, while acknowledging Borges as the fons et origo of all literary endeavours, attempted to find in the 19th-century European realists new ways to depict the troubled reality of Spain and South America.

One of those novels was La Ciudad y los Perros (The City and the Dogs, oddly translated into English as The Time of the Hero) by a young, unknown Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, who, in 1962, had won the recently created Premio Biblioteca Breve in Spain. Our literature teacher, while encouraging us to explore the transgressive fields of surrealism and fantastic fiction, thought that this novel was too extreme for adolescent imaginations: too much youthful violence; too much murky sex; too much questioning of authority. There had been nothing like it in Spanish-language fiction before. A fierce indictment of Peru’s military system, incandescent with rage against the hypocrisy of the established order as mirrored in Lima’s most prestigious military academy (which the author had attended), it was also the chronicle of an adolescent rite of passage into the ranks of the commanding patriarchy. The book so incensed the Peruvian authorities that, in the tradition of the city’s founding fathers, an auto-da-fé was ordered and dozens of copies were burned in the academy’s courtyard. At the very start of what was labelled by canny publishers as the “boom” of Latin-American literature, Vargas Llosa’s book was recognised as a modern subversive classic.

Until then, the so-called “novel of protest” in the literatures of Latin America had Zola as its model. Under the large shadow of the author of La Terre and Germinal, writers such as Ciro Alegría and José María Arguedas had written about the lives of those whom our European culture had taught us to deny. Vargas Llosa didn’t follow Zola but rather chose Flaubert as his guide, writing a decade later a splendid essay, The Perpetual Orgy, in which he argued that Madame Bovary kickstarted the modern novel by establishing an “objective” narrator who, because they refused to preach, gave the illusion of telling a story that was true.

At the start of the ‘boom’ of Latin-American literature, Vargas Llosa’s book was recognised as a modern subversive classic

We waited with greedy expectation for Vargas Llosa’s next novels, The Green House (1966) and Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), and later Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973) and the erotically humorous Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), all the time trying to discover who this man was who, in public life, swayed his political alliances from left to right, all the time remaining committed, in his fiction, to basic precepts of human empathy.

The young Vargas Llosa, like so many South-American intellectuals, had supported Castro’s revolution, but after the imprisonment of the poet Heberto Padilla he declared himself an opposer to the Cuban regime. Almost two decades later, Vargas Llosa became the head of the centre-right party Movimiento Libertad, and entered into a coalition with two other centre-right politicians. In 1990, as candidate to the presidency, Vargas Llosa lost to Alberto Fujimori, who was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses, and later still, unlawfully pardoned. From then on, Vargas Llosa restricted his political activism to his frequent newspaper columns and, much more subtly and effectively, to his fiction, for which he was awarded, in 2010, the Nobel prize.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/14/we-waited-greedily-for-his-novels-mario-vargas-llosa-a-revolutionary-of-spanish-language-fiction

THE GUARDIAN

Vargas Llosa: ‘I have no regrets’

Mario Vargas Llosa, pictured on January 24 at his home in Madrid.GIANFRANCO TRIPODO

Mario Vargas Llosa: ‘I have no regrets’

The Spanish-Peruvian author and Nobel laureate spoke with EL PAÍS at his home in Madrid ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française

MANUEL JABOIS

Madrid - FEB 20, 2023 - 13:34 COT

The Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize, welcomed me into his Madrid home ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française. The apartment is a place of enormous spaces, full of light and books. Seven years ago, the acclaimed author abandoned this famous refuge on Flora Street, in the heart of the Spanish capital, to move to an even more famous home in Madrid: a luxury residence in the exclusive area known as Puerta de Hierro, property of the businesswoman and socialite Isabel Preysler, with whom Vargas Llosa was romantically involved until their recent separation. “We had an experience, and it’s over. Now I’m back at home, surrounded by my books,” Vargas Llosa said partway through our interview, laughing as if he were Odysseus returning to Ithaca. “I have no regrets, absolutely none.”

 

Mario Vargas Llosa: ‘I have no regrets’

The Spanish-Peruvian author and Nobel laureate spoke with EL PAÍS at his home in Madrid ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française

Manuel Jabois
Madrid, February 20, 2023

The Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize, welcomed me into his Madrid home ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française. The apartment is a place of enormous spaces, full of light and books. Seven years ago, the acclaimed author abandoned this famous refuge on Flora Street, in the heart of the Spanish capital, to move to an even more famous home in Madrid: a luxury residence in the exclusive area known as Puerta de Hierro, property of the businesswoman and socialite Isabel Preysler, with whom Vargas Llosa was romantically involved until their recent separation. “We had an experience, and it’s over. Now I’m back at home, surrounde by mybooks,” Vargas L,laughing as if “I none.”

Vargas Llosa / The Elder Statesman of Latin American Literature — and a Writer of Our Moment

Vargas Llosa at home in Madrid.Credit...Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times

Mario Vargas Llosa

The Elder 

Statesman 

of Latin American Literature — 

and a Writer 

of Our Moment

Mario Vargas Llosa isn’t a household name among American readers. But at 81, he remains a literary and political colossus across the Spanish-speaking world, and his novels have never felt more relevant.

Vargas Llosa / El sobreviviente del boom latinoamericano

By Marcela Valdes
Feb. 20, 2018

Shall we sit outside?” Mario Vargas Llosa asked me, gesturing through the library’s floor-to-ceiling windows at the brilliant September afternoon. The only Peruvian ever to have won a Nobel Prize, Vargas Llosa now lives in an eight-bedroom mansion on the fringes of Madrid, in the neighborhood known as Puerta de Hierro. When I arrived, a butler in a white jacket led me through the enormous two-story foyer, across gleaming black and white tiles, into a library lined with dark wood bookcases. A crystal ashtray sat next to silver dishes of chocolate and cigarettes. This imposing casona seemed like a fitting residence for the last living giant of a golden age of Latin American literature, a man who may well be the most politically important novelist of our time, but the house does not belong to Vargas Llosa. Over the library’s fireplace hung a portrait of its owner, Isabel Preysler, in a red dress.

Vargas Llosa / “Political correctness is the enemy of freedom”

Mario Vargas llosa
XIMENA GARRIGUES Y SERGIO MOYA

INTERVIEW

Mario Vargas Llosa: “Political correctness is the enemy of freedom”

Besides writing prize-winning fiction, the Nobel Laureate has fought tirelessly for civil liberties. With his new book, ‘The Call of the Tribe,’ he promotes liberal thought and pays tribute to seven authors who embrace it. We talk to him about liberalism, intellectual blindness and the dangers facing democracy today

Maite Rico

March 2, 2018

English version by Heather Galloway.

Mario Vargas Llosa is in good form. The Peruvian Nobel Laureate laughs easily as he expounds on his theories of freedom and the individual and talks about his new book, La llamada de la tribu, or, The Call of the Tribe, which argues in favor of liberal thought in reference to seven influential authors: Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin and Jean-François Revel.

These men belong to a school of thought that believes in the individual as an autonomous and responsible being, and freedom as the supreme asset. They defend democracy and the separation of powers as the best system available to reconcile society’s contradictory values. They espouse a doctrine that rejects the “tribal spirit” that has historically fueled fascism, communism, nationalism and religious fanaticism. The Call of the Tribe is also an intellectual autobiography that takes the reader from Vargas Llosa’s Marxist and existentialist beginnings through to his endorsement of liberalism.

Question. Why are there so many attacks on liberal thought?

Answer. It has been targeted by ideologies that are enemies of freedom and which justifiably consider liberalism to be their most tenacious adversary. And that’s what I wanted to explain in the book. Fascism and communism have attacked liberalism strongly, mainly by caricaturing it and linking it to conservatism. In its early stages, liberalism was besieged primarily by the right. There were papal encyclicals – attacks from pulpits everywhere on a doctrine that was considered the enemy of religion and of moral values. I believe that these adversaries define the close relationship that exists between liberalism and democracy. Democracy has moved forward and human rights have been recognized basically thanks to liberal thinkers.

Q. The authors you analyze in your book all swam against the tide

A. Hayek and Ortega even had two books banned. Are liberals condemned to walk alone? Liberalism doesn’t just embrace, it actually stimulates difference. It recognizes that society is composed of very different kinds of people and it’s important to keep it that way. It’s not an ideology; an ideology is a secular religion. Liberalism defends some basic ideas: freedom, individualism, the rejection of collectivism and nationalism – in other words, all the ideologies or doctrines that limit or annihilate freedom within society.

XIMENA GARRIGUES Y SERGIO MOYA

Q. Talking of nationalism, Ortega y Gasset had plenty to say about the dangers of it in the Basque Country and Catalonia. Why do liberals reject nationalism?

A. Because it is incompatible with freedom. You just need to scratch the surface to see that nationalism involves a kind of racism. If you believe that belonging to a certain country or nation or race or religion is a privilege, a value in itself, you believe you are superior to others. And racism inevitably leads to violence and the suppression of freedom. That is why liberalism from the times of Adam Smith has perceived this kind of collectivism in nationalism – the rejection of reason for an act of faith.

Q. Populism, the reemergence of nationalism, Brexit… is there a rebirth of tribalism?

DEMOCRACY HAS MOVED FORWARD AND HUMAN RIGHTS HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED BASICALLY THANKS TO LIBERAL THINKERS

A. There’s a trend that opposes what I consider to be the most progressive development of our time – the formation of big entities that are slowing removing borders and incorporating different languages, customs and beliefs, as is happening in Europe. This triggers a lot of insecurity and uncertainty and a great temptation to return to the tribe, to the small homogeneous society that never really existed, where everyone is the same, where we all hold the same beliefs and speak the same language. It’s a myth that generates a great amount of security and that explains revolts such as Brexit, Catalan nationalism or the kind of nationalism that wreaks havoc within democracies as is happening in Poland, Hungary and even Holland. Nationalism is present, but my impression is that, as with Catalonia, it’s a minority and the strength of democratic institutions is going to gradually undermine it until it’s derailed. I’m pretty much an optimist.

Q. Your move from Marxism to liberalism is not unusual. In fact, it’s the same path as taken by some of the authors you analyze such as Popper, Aron and Revel.

A. My generation in Latin America was awoken to reason in a continent of monstrous inequalities and military dictatorships backed by the United States. For a young, somewhat restless Latin American, it was very difficult not to reject this caricature of democracy. I wanted to be a communist. I thought communism represented the antithesis of a military dictatorship, corruption and, above all, inequality. I started at the National University of San Marcos with the idea that there would be communists I could mix with there. And there were. But the communism in Latin America was pure Stalinism, with parties subject to the Comintern in Moscow. I was only militant for a year, then continued to be a socialist in a more relaxed fashion, a stance strengthened by the Cuban revolution, which at first seemed to be a different, less dogmatic style of socialism. I became enthusiastic. In the 1970s, I went to Cuba five times. But gradually, disillusionment seeped in, particularly after the UMAP – Military Units to Aid Production – was introduced. There were raids against young people I knew. It was traumatic. And I remember writing a private letter to Fidel telling him that I was disconcerted, and asking how Cuba, which seemed to be a tolerant and open style of socialism, could put “worms” and homosexuals in concentration camps alongside common criminals. Fidel invited myself and a dozen other intellectuals to speak to him. We spent the whole night, 12 hours, from eight in the afternoon to eight the next morning, basically listening to him speak. It was impressive, but not very convincing. From then on, I became a little dubious. The definitive rupture came with the Padilla case – when the writer Heberto Padilla, jailed in 1971 was obliged to denigrate himself in public, marking the end of the idyllic relationship between important intellectuals and the Cuban regime. I went through a long and difficult process, embracing democracy and moving gradually towards the liberal doctrine – I was lucky enough to live in Britain during the Margaret Thatcher years. There’s a trend that opposes what I consider to be the most progressive development of our time – the formation of big entities that are slowing removing borders and incorporating different languages, customs and beliefs, as is happening in Europe. This triggers a lot of insecurity and uncertainty and a great temptation to return to the tribe, to the small homogeneous society that never really existed, where everyone is the same, where we all hold the same beliefs and speak the same language. It’s a myth that generates a great amount of security and that explains revolts such as Brexit, Catalan nationalism or the kind of nationalism that wreaks havoc within democracies as is happening in Poland, Hungary and even Holland. Nationalism is present, but my impression is that, as with Catalonia, it’s a minority and the strength of democratic institutions is going to gradually undermine it until it’s derailed. I’m pretty much an optimist.

Q. Your move from Marxism to liberalism is not unusual. In fact, it’s the same path as taken by some of the authors you analyze such as Popper, Aron and Revel.

A. My generation in Latin America was awoken to reason in a continent of monstrous inequalities and military dictatorships backed by the United States. For a young, somewhat restless Latin American, it was very difficult not to reject this caricature of democracy. I wanted to be a communist. I thought communism represented the antithesis of a military dictatorship, corruption and, above all, inequality. I started at the National University of San Marcos with the idea that there would be communists I could mix with there. And there were. But the communism in Latin America was pure Stalinism, with parties subject to the Comintern in Moscow. I was only militant for a year, then continued to be a socialist in a more relaxed fashion, a stance strengthened by the Cuban revolution, which at first seemed to be a different, less dogmatic style of socialism. I became enthusiastic. In the 1970s, I went to Cuba five times. But gradually, disillusionment seeped in, particularly after the UMAP – Military Units to Aid Production – was introduced. There were raids against young people I knew. It was traumatic. And I remember writing a private letter to Fidel telling him that I was disconcerted, and asking how Cuba, which seemed to be a tolerant and open style of socialism, could put “worms” and homosexuals in concentration camps alongside common criminals. Fidel invited myself and a dozen other intellectuals to speak to him. We spent the whole night, 12 hours, from eight in the afternoon to eight the next morning, basically listening to him speak. It was impressive, but not very convincing. From then on, I became a little dubious. The definitive rupture came with the Padilla case – when the writer Heberto Padilla, jailed in 1971 was obliged to denigrate himself in public, marking the end of the idyllic relationship between important intellectuals and the Cuban regime. I went through a long and difficult process, embracing democracy and moving gradually towards the liberal doctrine – I was lucky enough to live in Britain during the Margaret Thatcher years.

XIMENA GARRIGUES Y SERGIO MOYA

Q. The picture you paint of Margaret Thatcher as a brave, cultured woman of deep liberal convictions, contrasts starkly with the image we have of her.

A. That’s an absolutely unjust caricature. When I arrived in England, it was a decadent country – a country with freedom but whose mettle was being snuffed out gradually by the Labor Party’s economic nationalism. Margaret Thatcher’s revolution woke Britain up. They were tough times; finishing with the sinecure of the trade unions, creating a competent free-market society, and defending democracy with conviction while facing up to socialism, China, the USSR – the cruelest dictatorships in history. They were decisive years for me because I started to read Hayek and Popper, both authors quoted by Thatcher. She said that The Open Society and Its Enemies would be a crucial book for the 20th Century. The contribution of Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to the culture of freedom, finishing with the Soviet Union – the biggest challenge democratic culture had ever had – is a reality that is unfortunately portrayed in a media influenced by a campaign from the left whose achievements are few.

Q. And what is western democracy’s main challenge now?

A. Its biggest enemy now is populism. No one in their right mind wants to model their country on North Korea, Cuba or Venezuela. Marxism is already on the fringes of political life but that’s not the case with populism, which shatters democracies from within. Far less direct than an ideology, it is a tendency weak democracies are unfortunately vulnerable to.

XIMENA GARRIGUES Y SERGIO MOYA

Q. The bank crisis of 2008, that exacerbated inequality, has revived the criticism leveled at liberal doctrine, often referred to as neoliberalism.

A. I don’t know what this thing is they call neoliberalism. It’s a way of caricaturing liberalism and presenting it as a ruthless form of capitalism. Liberalism is not dogmatic, it doesn’t have the answer to everything. It has been evolving since the days of Adam Smith until now as society is increasingly complex. Today there are injustices, such as discrimination against women that didn’t even figure in the past.

Q. The main difference between different degrees of liberalism is the role of the State.

IT’S A MYTH THAT GENERATES A GREAT AMOUNT OF SECURITY AND THAT EXPLAINS REVOLTS SUCH AS BREXIT OR CATALAN NATIONALISM

A. Yes. Liberals want an effective State but not an invasive one; a State that will guarantee freedom and equal opportunities, particularly in education and with respect to the law. But beyond this basic consensus, there are differences. Isaiah Berlin says that economic freedom can’t be unrestricted because that was what led to children being stuck in the mines in the 19th century. Hayek, on the other hand, had such extraordinary confidence in the market that he believed it could solve all problems if it was allowed to work. Berlin was much more realistic. He believed that, in effect, the market was what brought economic progress but if progress meant the creation of such huge inequality, it put the essence of democracy at risk. Meanwhile, Adam Smith, considered the father of liberalism, was very flexible. Of course, there are distortions of liberalism. For example, there are economists who are completely closed-minded, convinced that only economic reform can bring an inevitable freedom. I don’t agree. I think ideas are more important than economic reform. But going back to the caricatures or the tricks of language, the use of the label “progressive” is very significant; in Spain it is used to describe forces defending the dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. I believe unfortunately that this is the intellectuals’ contribution to the distortion of language. They have infused Marxism and communism with prestige as was done earlier with Nazism and fascism. Blindly, intellectuals have always seen democracy as a mediocre system that lacked the beauty, perfection and coherence of the big ideologies. And this blindness is not incompatible with great intelligence. How could Heidegger, perhaps the greatest philosopher in recent times, for example, be a Nazi? The same happened with communism. It attracted writers and poets of great stature who applauded the Gulag. Sartre, the most intelligent French philosopher of the 20th century supported the Cultural Revolution in China.

Q. Sartre justified genocides and supported tyrannical regimes and rubbed along with the Nazis while others, like Albert Camus, risked their lives in the Resistance. And then he gave lectures! Why do you continue to defend him?

A. Well, he was a fundamental part of my adolescence.

XIMENA GARRIGUES Y SERGIO MOYA

Q. You call him a great intellectual, but he was a man whose politics were always questionable.

A. He wasn’t a true member of the Resistance – he even agreed to replace a teacher who had been dropped on account of being Jewish. He belonged to a part of the Resistance that wasn’t particularly active and I believe he never overcame the complex this gave him and spent the rest of his life making efforts, some of which were grotesque, to earn the ‘progressive’ and ‘revolutionary’ titles. It was a very common need in his time – intellectuals wanted to pass the progressive test because it was what was expected of them. In Latin America, if you weren’t a left-wing intellectual in the 1970s, you simply weren’t an intellectual. You were shut out. Culture was controlled by a left that was very clannish and dogmatic and that had a profound warping effect on cultural life. I think this has changed considerably.

Q. That also happened in Europe.

TODAY THERE ARE INJUSTICES, SUCH AS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN THAT DIDN’T EVEN FIGURE IN THE PAST

A. Of course. Although during my time in England, there were intellectuals who didn’t have an inferiority complex and who came out and fought and that helped me to be honest with myself.

Q. It’s a matter of intellectual honesty.

A. Elites who defend regimes they would never put up with… Bertrand Russell, for example, defended very noble causes and was a very admirable person in many ways but at the same time he defended dreadful things and allowed himself to be manipulated by the left who had no respect for his work or ideas and had not even read them. How do you explain the contradiction? Unfortunately, intelligence is not a guarantee of intellectual honesty.

Q. Should we respect the work of a miscreant?

A. We should not only respect it, it should be published. If you start to judge literature in terms of morals and ethics, it wouldn’t just be decimated, it would disappear – it would lose its raison d’être. Literature expresses what reality tries to hide for a variety of reasons. Nothing stimulates the critical spirit in society so much as good literature. But literature and morality don’t get along. They’re enemies. And you have to respect literature if you believe in freedom.

Q. Does political correctness threaten freedom?

A. Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it rejects honesty and authenticity. We have to tackle it as the distortion of the truth.

XIMENA GARRIGUES Y SERGIO MOYA

Q. Recently, the term “fake news” has appeared in our midst as though it were something new.

A. New terms for old realities. In the case of misinformation and manipulation, communism was incredibly clever at distorting things, undermining honest people and masking lies with false truths that came to substitute reality.

Q. The Soviet Union has gone, but now we have a new kind of cyber-interference from Moscow that is said to have affected the US elections, the Catalan elections and the electoral campaigns in Mexico and Colombia.

A. What we’ve got is a technological revolution that is perverting the course of democracy rather than strengthening it. It’s technology that could be used for different ends but which the enemies of democracy and freedom are using for their own ends. It’s a reality we need to face up to but unfortunately I believe we still have very limited means of doing so. We are bombarded with a technology that has been used to serve lies and post-truths and which could become, if we don’t rein in the phenomenon, deeply destructive, corrupting civilization, progress and democratic truth.

EL PAÍS

Vargas Llosa / A master of humour and humanity

Mario Vargas Llosa
by Alejandro Cabeza

Mario Vargas Llosa: a master of humour and humanity
BIOGRAPHY

by Robert McCrum

The Peruvian writer of novels with spellbinding narrative power has also taken on the comic romp and politics, through his books and via a presidential bid

Thursday 7 October 2010 18.42 BST

F

or many readers Mario Vargas Llosa has been the most approachable and exhilarating Latin American writer of our times. For his many fans, of whom I am one, the recognition by the Swedish academy is long overdue. Throughout his career Vargas Llosa has always had the demeanour of a great writer on a quasi-Victorian scale, addressing the great issues of the day through the exercise of his imagination but refracted through the prism of modernism and post-modernism. William Faulkner remains a lifelong influence. In 1994 his importance to the Hispanic world was acknowledged when he won the Miguel de Cervantes prize.

As well as regularly publishing novels of spellbinding narrative power (notably The War of the End of the World and The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta), he has also engaged passionately with the politics of his time in journalism, essays and even political thrillers.

Although as a young man he supported Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, in 1990 he ran for the presidency of Peru as a moderate reformer. When that quixotic bid failed, swamped by the late populist surge of Alberto Fujimori, he withdrew from national politics but continued to explore the complex dissonances of South American politics. In the words of the Nobel citation, his fiction is obsessed with "the cartography of structures of power and trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat".

One of many disarming qualities of Vargas Llosa – the globetrotting expatriate and family man – is that allied to his fierce engagement with the society of which he is a part is a witty, often wry detachment that colours all his work with humour and profound humanity. The "Mario" of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, a comic romp that was adapted by Hollywood as Tune in Tomorrow, is as real and vivid as the polemical author of Death in the Andes. To assuage his lifelong passion for football he has written about the game for El País.

Winning this prize can be, for the new laureate, a terrible distraction. Vargas Llosa will, I suspect, take it in his stride. He has a natural grace in the public arena, an appetite for crowds, a remarkable command of English, plus an instinctive preference for a literary routine, combined with a love of travel.

He is also a passionate anglophile who prefers to write in the reading room of the British library and has kept an apartment in Knightsbridge with his wife, Patricia, for more than 30 years. He says he likes the anonymity he can enjoy in the streets of London. As a popular Nobel laureate he may find, in the near future, that it's more difficult to be incognito.

THE GUARDIAN

Vargas Llosa breaks his silence over friendship with García Márquez

Nobel laureate discusses ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ at Spanish open university course in Madrid

English version by Nick Lyne.

Javier Rodríguez Marcos

San Lorenzo De El Escorial, July 12, 2017 

In 1967, the year One Hundred Years of Solitude was published, its author, Gabriel García Márquez, met fellow Latin American writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the two became firm friends. But nine years later, the pair would famously fall out, reportedly never to speak again.

Last Thursday, Vargas Llosa broke a long-standing silence and spoke of his relationship with Márquez, who died in 2014, as part of a series of lectures to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The 81-year-old Nobel laureate described the man he called “Gabo” to his audience at the San Lorenzo de El Escorial summer school, organized by Madrid’s Complutense University, depicting him as shy and unsociable in public but very funny and entertaining in private.

I was sad when García Márquez died. To discover I am the last of that generation is sad Mario Vargas Llosa

The pair came from similarly disjointed family backgrounds: both were brought up by their grandmothers and did not get on with their fathers. But what really connected them, said Vargas Llosa, was their love of the work of 20th-century US writer William Faulkner, “our common denominator.” Equally important, said Vargas Llosa, was that they both came to the full realization that they were Latin Americans when they first came to Europe.

Vargas Llosa soon brought up what he called the political event that awoke “the world’s curiosity for Latin America and its literature,” and which would lead to his falling-out with García Márquez: Cuba. “I was very enthusiastic about the revolution at first; García Márquez hardly at all. He was always very discreet about it, because he had been purged from the Communist Party when he worked for Prensa Latina,” which was the official news agency of Cuba, founded shortly after the revolution that ended in 1959.

Gabriel García Márquez in Madrid in 1994.GORKA LEJARCEGI

But later, García Márquez would be photographed alongside Fidel Castro. “I think he was a very practical man and realized it was better to be with Cuba than against it. He managed to avoid the mud that was slung at those of us who were critical of the way the revolution evolved toward communism from its early position, which was more liberal and socialist.”

Describing One Hundred Years of Solitude, Vargas Llosa said he was “stunned” by the book when he read it. “So much so that I hurried off to write an article called El Amadis en America [Amadís de Gaula was a popular Spanish chivalric romance referenced by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote]. I thought that at last Latin America had its own novel about knights, a story where the imaginary came to the fore without losing the underlying substance of reality. It also had the virtue of few masterpieces: the ability to attract a demanding reader concerned about language, and at the same time a basic reader only interested in following the story.”

Vargas Llosa also taught García Márquez’s work at universities in Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and Spain in the late 1960s, which led to his 1971 book García Márquez: Story of a Deicide, based on his doctoral thesis.

In contrast to One Hundred Years of Solitude, Vargas Llosa said he thought García Márquez’s weakest book was 1975’s The Autumn of the Patriarch, which he described as “a caricature of García Márquez, a novel by somebody imitating himself.”

I wouldn’t want our continent to stay as it is so it could produce great literature Mario Vargas Llosa

Vargas Llosa included García Márquez alongside other Latin American writers like the Mexican Juan Rulfo and Cuba’s Alejo Carpentier in terms of knowing how to find beauty in the “ugliness” and “underdevelopment” of Latin America. Asked if a prosperous Latin America would produce such imaginative literature as that of the three writers he mentioned, Vargas Llosa said he was unsure, but added: “I wouldn’t want our continent to stay as it is so it can produce great literature. Countries get the literature they deserve.”

Inevitably, Vargas was asked whether he and García Márquez ever saw each other again after the infamous incident outside a cinema in Mexico City when the former punched the latter in the face during their argument about Cuba. “No,” he replied, smiling broadly, then added: “We’re moving toward dangerous ground. The time has come to put an end to this conversation. I was sad when he died, it was like the death of [Argentinean novelist Julio] Cortázar or [Mexican writer] Carlos Fuentes. They weren’t just great writers, but also great friends. To discover that I am the last of that generation is sad.”

EL PAÍS