Dictator novels:

Llosa's life and times

In last week's 'Boom and Beyond' column, I gave a general overview of Dictator Novels by Latin America writers in response to various dictatorships. Mario Vargas Llosa was among the authors specifically mentioned in the column and this was in connection with his best seller ' The feast of the goat'. It is a coincidence that the announcement of his 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature came a couple of days later. It therefore seems fitting to dedicate this week's column to Vargas Llosa's life and writings.

Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936, in the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa. For the first 10 years of his life he lived in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with his mother and grandparents. He returned to Peru in 1946 when his parents, who had divorced shortly before his birth, were reunited. The family settled in Magdalena del Mar, a middle-class Lima suburb.By the time he was 16, Llosa was working part-time for several Lima tabloids, mainly covering crime stories. His first book, ' Los Jefes', a collection of short stories, was published in 1958 when he was 22.

These years proved to be difficult for Vargas Llosa, since he and his father did not see eye to eye on his writing ambitions. "We were opposites and we did not respect each other," he said. "In Bolivia when I wrote, my grandparents and mother praised me for it. When my father discovered that I was a writer, he had the opposite reaction. The bourgeoisie of Lima scorned literature -they considered it an alibi for idlers, an activity of the upper class." Fearful that his son was in danger of losing his virility because of his passion for writing, Vargas Llosa's father shipped him off to Leoncio Prado, an institution that the author described as half reform school and half college, run by fanatics of military discipline. "It was the discovery of hell for me," Vargas Llosa said. "I understood what Darwin's theory meant in the struggle for life."

The painful experiences at Leoncio Prado were the basis for his first novel, 'The Time of the Hero' (1963). The work gained instant notoriety when Peruvian military leaders condemned it and burned one thousand copies in the courtyard of Leoncio Prado. Praised for its stylistic and innovative craftsmanship, the novel presented a story of official corruption and cruelty in a military institution. It won several major literary awards in Europe and quickly established Vargas Llosa's reputation as social critic and writer.

His next two novels were 'The Green House' (1969), a magical realistic tale of an enchanted brothel, and ' 'Conversation in the Cathedral' (1969), a narrative of the moral depravity of life in Peru during the 1950s under dictator Manuel Odria. Both books provided further variations on his themes of hypocrisy and corruption in Peruvian society and politics.

In 1973 Vargas Llosa published his first humorous novel, 'Captain Pantoja and the Special Service'. It was a black comedy about a naive army officer who diligently obeys his commanding officers' order to organize a group of prostitutes to service soldiers in desolate jungle camps. The novel depicted the author's continual disdain for military bureaucracy and incompetence with caustic wit.

Four years later his most internationally popular (and most autobiographical), novel, 'Aunt Julia and The Scriptwriter' was published. The semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical Mario is a young student and would-be writer, whose careers and aspirations are disrupted when he falls in love with his aunt-in-law. Pedro Camacho, an eccentric Bolivian scriptwriter, has been hired at the radio station where Mario works.

The youth envies the prodigious output of Pedro's intricate soap operas. He hopes to learn from his new mentor the secrets of being an artist. The chapters alternate between descriptions of Mario's amusing and increasingly complicated life and Pedro's formulaic and decreasingly coherent scripts, as each character is gradually overwhelmed by the burdens and expectations they've created for themselves.

On a deeper level, "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" is about artistic failure. Mario's writing suffers because he is too busy living life to the fullest, while Pedro's well-being deteriorates because he barely experiences life at all. While Mario's life is the stuff of literature, his attempts at short fiction are overly concerned with artistic affectation. The final chapter completes this theme - the writer who balances a passion for life and devotion to art is the one who ultimately succeeds.

This device of multiple-level storytelling from the point of view of widely divergent characters is a hallmark of Vargas Llosa's work. Most critics agree that the structures of his next two overtly political novels, ' War at the End of the World' (1981) and 'The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta' (1984) were shaped by it. In 1986 Vargas Llosa turned his hand to detective fiction and wrote the fast-paced cops and killer thriller ' Who Killed Palomino Molera' . Although the novel lacked the thickly layered narrative scope of his other works, it clearly proved the author's talents for writing sordid detail and earthy, comic dialogue.

His 1987 work 'The Storyteller' returned again to the theme of tale-telling from multiple points of view. It relates the adventures of a nameless narrator who is fascinated by the almost mystical transformation of his college friend, Saul Zurantas, a Peruvian Jew and former student of ethnology, who leaves civilization to live and tell tales among the Machiguenga tribesmen in the depths of the Amazonian rain forests. "Who is purer or happier because he's renounced his destiny?"

The storyteller asks as he roams the jungle with the Machiguenga, people who must continually walk in order to fulfil their obligation to the gods and preserve the earth and the sky and the stars. "Nobody," the storyteller responds. "We'd best be what we are. The one who gives up fulfilling his own obligation so as to fulfill that of another will lose his soul."

A haunting, deeply spiritual novel, 'The Storyteller' is entirely different in scope and tone from Vargas Llosa's later work 'Elogio de la Madrastra' (1988), an erotic tale of sexual tension between a stepmother and stepson, described by the author as a "diversion." An English version, which translates 'In Praise of the Stepmother', was published in 1990.

It was an erotic novel about a beautiful but naughty little boy. The later novels are amazing works from a man who temporarily abandoned his isolation as a writer to pursue an active political career. This was to fulfill what he considered his obligations toward improving the moral, social and economic quality of life in his country.

In 1990 Vargas Llosa became the candidate for president of a centre-right coalition called the Democratic Front (Fredemo). He was opposed by the candidate of the Change (Cambio) 90 Party, Alberto Fujimori. The well-known author took an early lead but gradually lost ground and in a run-off election was defeated by Fujimori. His book about the experience, 'Tale of a Sacrifical Llama', released in June, 1994, offers a convincing self-portrait of a political innocent sinking under a tide of democratic absurdities. This follows his work 'A Fish in the Water: A Memoir' which detailed "his bittersweet look at the nearly three years he spent in public life."

Vargas Llosa went back to his writing full-time after his brief affair with politics. The coveted Planeta Prize for 1994, traditionally awarded each year to a Spaniard for the best pseudonymous submitted manuscript of fiction, went to Mario Vargas Llosa (whose application for Spanish citizenship was approved in July).

His 'Lituma en los Andes' (translated as Death in the Andes) is a story of political violence and social regression within a contemporary Andean setting. His 1997 novel, 'The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto' marked the first time any publisher had released a title in all Spanish-language markets on the same day. Sixteen of the 26 countries involved (including Spain) have Santillana companies to print and publish.

In the case of 'The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto', only Spain and Mexico printed for all the others. In the first month of publication 250,000 copies were sold, 100,000 of them in Latin America.

"I am very surprised, I did not expect this," the author told Spanish National Radio last week.

He said that he thought it was a joke when he received the call informing him that he won the Nobel Prize. "It had been years since my name was even mentioned," he added.

"It has certainly been a total surprise, a very pleasant surprise, but a surprise nonetheless."

He is South America's first laureate since Colombia's Gabriel García Márquez won in 1982. Once close friends, the two men have been involved in a ongoing feud since a punch-up in a Mexican cinema in 1976.

The academy's permanent secretary, Peter Englund, called the Peruvian a divinely gifted storyteller and worthy winner of the 10 million Swedish Kronor prize (168,971,851.62 LKR). For years many predicted that the author would add the Nobel to his Cervantes prize but Llosa himself said his liberalism (which he defined as defending democracy and the free market) meant it was "completely impossible" for him to win.

"I have taken all the precautions necessary for them never to give it to me," he joked last year.