His “greatest satisfaction as a writer” was not the many novels he wrote, his Nobel Prize in literature obtained in 2010 or his career as a journalist, but his entry, during his lifetime, in thea prestigious collection of The Pleiade. Mario Vargas Llosa was also the first foreign author to obtain this recognition.
This assumed Francophile, who lived eight years in Paris, died at the age of 89this Sunday, April 13, at the end of the day. “It is with deep sadness that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, died today in Lima, Surrounded by his family and in peace“, wrote his eldest son, Alvaro, in a message also signed by his brother, Gonzalo, and his sister, Morgana.
His death marks the end of an era: that of the golden generation of Latin American literatureof which he was the last large representative. In a message published on X, the president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, regretted the death of the writer. “His intellectual genius and his vast work will remain a lasting heritage for future generations. We express our most sincere condolences to his family, friends and the world of literature. Rest in peace, illustrious Peruvian of all time”.
“He enjoyed a long, multiple and fruitful life”
In recent months, the rumors about the deterioration of the writer’s state of health had multiplied. He “is at the dawn of his 90th birthday, an age when the intensity of his activities must be reduced a little,” said his son Alvaro last October, without specifying his father’s health. “His departure will sadden his loved ones, his friends and his readers all over the world, but we hope they will find a consolation, like us, in the fact thatHe enjoyed a long, multiple and fruitful life“Adds his son in his message.
“We will carry out in the hours and days to come in accordance with his instructions. No public ceremony will take place. Our mother, our children and ourselves are convinced that we will have the space and intimacy necessary to make him our farewells with family and in the company of close friends,” he adds. “His body, as he wished, will be cremated,” concluded the press release.
Mario Vargas Llosa had lived in Lima since last year. A few days before his 89th birthday, which he had celebrated on March 28, he appeared on his son’s X account Alvaro in a series of three photos taken in places in the capital where he wrote his last two novels Five corners (2016) et I dedicate my silence (2023).
It was not the first time that his son shared photos of him in the capital. Admired for his description of social realitiesthe author of masterpieces as The city and the dogs or Conversation in the cathedral was also criticized by South American intellectual circles for its conservative positions.
-In 2017, the writer explained to RTL His love for Gustave Flaubertwhich he discovered in 1959, when he arrived in France. “Read Madame Bovary changed my life. By the beauty of the novel, but also because Flaubert made me discover the writer I wanted to be: a realistic writer. But a realism not incompatible with the richness of beauty, “he said.
In November 2021, Mario Vargas Llosa was elected at the French Academydespite a higher age than the statutes allow. An appointment that had not pleased everyone, the writer having never written in French.
Born in a family in the Peruvian middle class, Mario Vargas Llosa was one of the great protagonists of the Latin-American literary “boom” of the 1960s and 1970swith the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Argentinian Julio Cortazar.
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