Profile
Mario Vargas Llosa — (1936-)
Peruvian Writer
Peruvian novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist, literary critic, one of the central writers in the Hispanic world. Vargas Llosa started his literary career in Europe, but most of his novels are set in Peru. From his first works, Vargas Llosa has used a wide variety of avant-garde techniques to create an aesthetic "double of the real world." Although Vargas Llosa has followed the tradition of social protest of Peruvian fiction exposing political corruption, machismo, racial prejudices and violence, he has underlined that a writer should never preach or compromise artistic aims for ideological propaganda.
Vargas Llosa attended Leoncio Prado Military Academy (1950-52), and Colegio Nacional San Miguel de Piura (1952). From 1955 to 1957 Vargas Llosa studied literature and law at the University of San Marcos. He then attended graduate school at the University of Madrid, from where he received his Ph.D. in 1959. Vargas Llosa's doctoral dissertation about García Márquez (1971) was followed by several books on literary criticism, among them LA ORGÍA PERPETUA (1975), about Flaubert's masterpiece Madame Bovary. With Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, and García Márquez, Vargas Llosa was among the most famous writers, whose aim was to revitalize the Latin American novel.
In 1990 Vargas Llosa was a conservative candidate (Fredemo, the Democratic Front) for the Peruvian presidency. The development of his political convictions, from a sympathizer of Cuban revolution to the liberal right, has astonished his critics and has made it impossible to approach his work from a single point of view. Sabine Koellmann has noted that the publication of Vargas Llosa's LA FIESTA DEL CHIVO (2000, The Feast of the Goat) confirmed, "that politics is one of the most persistent 'demons' which, according to his theory, provoke his creativity." Vargas Llosa was defeated by Alberto Fujimori, an agricultural engineer of Japanese descent, also a political novice, but who had a more straightforward agenda to present to the voters.
Vargas Llosa's bitter memoir, EL PEZ EN EL AGUA (A Fish in the Water), appeared in 1993. It focused on his run for the presidency in 1990 - he was supposed to win the little-known Alberto Fujimori. The Feast of the Goat continued the author's political excursion into the recent history of South America.
Source: Books & Writers
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