Reading Llosa

Mario
Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer born in 1936, who comes from an aristocratic
background; his family were connected to the ruling classes. His parents separated around the time that he
was born and he was actually raised by his mother’s father. He spent much of his first five years living
in Bolivia, before attending a private school in northern Peru. At the age of 14 his parents reconciled and
took him to live in Lima. His education
also included two years at a military academy and the study of law and
literature at university in Lima. 

It was
while at university that he became active in politics and he later spent time
working as a journalist and newscaster.
He married in 1955 and started to have some success with his writing
work in the late 1950s. A series of
successful novels were published throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s and he ran
for president of Peru in 1990. He has
won many awards for his journalism, novels and plays. 

Works

Llosa
is one of a number connected with the rise of Latin American literature in the
1960s, when a number of writers produced works that were met with critical
acclaim. His first novel The Time of the
Hero, was based on his experiences at the military academy. This was not received well by the Peruvian
army, which organised burnings of copies of the book.  His second novel was The Green House, which
had an intricate plot with multiple stories, but was based around two main
characters.  Complicated plots are a
feature of some of Llosa’s other works, including Conversation in the Cathedral,
published in 1969, telling of his life at university. This work is a single, but lengthy
conversation between two characters.

Parody
and satire are features of later works, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special
Service, published in 1973 and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977) continued
the trend. Works published in the early
1980s were less experimental and included The War at the End of the World
(1981) and The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1984). The Storyteller sees Llosa return to the
Amazon jungle, while eroticism was a feature of later works, such as In Praise
of the Stepmother (1988) and The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997). After running for president he published a
murder mystery in 1990, Death in the Andes. 

Though
his books are still popular, some of his critics have argued that his political
stance is shifting and that his best work was completed in the 1960s.

Nobel
Prize

There
are a number of factors that have contributed to Llosa being awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature. A large body of
well-received work and his ability to experiment with the literary form are
important points, as is the range of work, which covers many literary types and
makes him hard to pigeonhole. He has
long been considered a major contender for the prize and many believe he should
have received it some years ago.