The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

Mario Vargas Llosa

• “’No such luck. There aren’t any thugs abroad, what with this cold,’ Shorty said, rubbing his hands together again. ‘The only madmen out tonight in weather like this are you and me. And those critters.’ He pointed to the rough of the slaughterhouse, and the sergeant, squinting, managed to make out a half-dozen turkey buzzards, huddled up with their beaks tucked underneath their wings, sitting in a straight line on the peak of the roof. How hungry they must be, he thought. Even though they’re freezing, they’re sitting there smelling death. Shorty Soldevilla signed his report in the dim light of the streetlamp, with the chewed stub of a pencil that kept slipping out of his fingers. There was nothing to report: no accidents, no crimes, no drunken brawls. ‘A quiet night, sergeant, he said, as he walked a few blocks with him to the Avenida Manco Capac. ‘I hope it stays that way till my relief takes over. After that, the world can come to an end as far as I’m concerned.’ He laughed as though he’d just said something very funny, and Sergeant Lituma thought: The mentality of certain guards beggars belief.”[1]

• “’He’s capable of killing him and saying he turned on me and I had to shoot him,’ Shorty said. ‘He’s capable of anything just to get his medal, the Piuran.’ ‘And what if they turn out to be fairy tales?’ Blondy said. ‘When the message came from Borja and I read what the Lieutenant said, I couldn’t believe it, Shorty. Nieves doesn’t look like a bandit and he always seemed like a nice fellow.’ ‘Bah, nobody looks like a bandit,’ Shorty said. ‘Or maybe everybody looks like a bandit. But I was surprised too when I read the order. How many years will they give him?’ ‘Who can tell,’ Blondy said. ‘A long sentence, naturally. They’ve robbed everybody, and the people here have sworn to get them. You’ve seen how they’ve been badgering us for so long to look for them, even though they haven’t been doing any more stealing.’”[2]

Mario Vargas Llosa (born 1936) is a Peruvian-Spanish author, politician, and man of letters. The first person to appear on the Weekly Sage while alive, Llosa has travelled extensively throughout his life, but his work was consistently rooted in Peru, the country of his birth. Born in the city of Arequipa, Llosa’s personal life and experiences ranged widely, inspiring and framing many of his literary works.

Experiencing significant family turmoil in his early years, young Mario was sent to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, a time that would later inspire his novel, The Time of the Hero. A few years later, as a student and journalist, Llosa married Julia, a woman 10 years his elder. This later led him to write his work, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. After his studies in law and literature were completed, Mario spent time studying and writing in Madrid and Paris while he honed his skills.

During this time, Llosa produced several novels, such as The Green House and Conversations in the Cathedral, which utilized complex literary techniques and styles, achieved significant acclaim. Winning international literary awards, Llosa’s examinations of the Peruvian military, underworld, and jungle caused controversy among the leaders of his home country.

During these years, military coups and Communist revolutionary movements contested with nascent attempts at democracy for political and social control of Peru, and other countries in South America and Latin America. While Llosa’s confrontations with the corrupt institutions, conflict, and violence of this period led him to significant drama and modernism, he also developed a comedic touch. His work Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter displays this in depth, as Llosa mixes a central narrative with a degenerating series of radio soap opera scripts, whose fictional author loses his ability to write clearly and keep his characters names and professions straight. This ability to employ a variety of literary approaches and manners is highly impressive across a wide range of Llosa’s works.

He expanded on this ability to range broadly across the written field by composing the first of several historical novels, The War of the End of the World, focused on a conflict in 19^th century Brazil between state military forces and a cult. With Peru having returned to a period of constitutional and democratic stability, Llosa became politically engaged in his home country. Having been a leftist earlier in his career, and a supporter of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, Mario Vargas Llosa gradually transitioned towards more neoliberal political views.

While categorizing the unique views of Llosa may be difficult, he did found the Peruvian political party Movimiento Libertad in 1987, and quickly became a leader in it. Pursuing the defense of basic rights and freedoms, Llosa built a center-right coalition and ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990. While he won the first round of balloting, he was defeated in the ensuing run-off, and his focused on writing subsequently.

Mario Vargas Llosa’s novels contain a great deal of depth and creativity over the course of his career. While he was politically engaged, his works do not come across as ideologically motivated or tainted. His ability to set a scene with precise and profound description is superb. The multiple-perspective approach he adopts is challenging to understand at times, but broadens and deepens the slices of life that enrich his works. The chaos of life and relationships are accurately and creatively presented as a result. Characters names change as their circumstances develop, and the use of flashbacks, even in the middle of dialogue, mirrors the everyday process of thought and reflection that underlies human interaction.

As a result of his creative and influential career, Mario Vargas Llosa has already received numerous awards. The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature has been coupled with 2014 admission into the Mont Pelerin Society and the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute in 2005. Awards and honours have come from numerous countries around the globe. Very rarely has an atheist and employer of postmodernist style received such acclaim from the political right. Nevertheless, while Llosa’s work may embrace the value of the individual and the harms of central oppression, the Christian hope of heaven, or even an ecumenical, possible eternal rest. The incredible accumulation of literary talent displayed in his works, and the humor and richness they provide, cannot make up for the fact that the best thing Llosa’s characters can hope for is a moment of family feeling and relaxing leisure, too often rare in the dangerous world he confronted and described.

• “Dr. Zevallos raises the lamp, he searches and finally finds him, not far from the door: he is neither drunk nor mad, but cringing with fear. His eyes are rolling madly in their swollen sockets and his back is pressed against the wall as if he were trying to push it down. ‘Your wife?’ Dr. Zevallos says, with astonishment. ‘Your wife, Anselmo?’ ‘They can both be dead and I still won’t accept it.’ Father Garcia pounds on the table and his stool creaks. ‘I won’t accept that infamy. Even after a hundred years, it will still be infamous as far as I’m concerned.’ The door of the vestibule has opened and the man retreats as if he saw a ghost, he escapes from the cone of light coming from the lamp. The small figure wrapped in a white robe a few steps into the courtyard, son, she stops before she reaches the entranceway: who was there? Why didn’t they come in? It was he, mama, Dr. Zevallos lowers the lamp, hides Anselmo with his body: he had to go out for a while. ‘Wait for me on the Malecon,’ he whispers. ‘I’m going to get my bag.’ ‘Start with the soup.’ Angelica Mercedes puts two steaming gourds on the table. ‘It already has salt in it, and I’ll bring the snacks in just a little while.’”[3]
• “They broadcast at least half a dozen a day, and I greatly enjoyed spying on the casts when they were in front of the microphone: hungry, shabbily dressed actors and actresses on the decline, whose tender, crystal-clear, young voices were terribly different from their old-looking faces, their bitter mouths, and their tired eyes. ‘The day television comes to Peru, the only way out for them will be suicide,’ Genaro Jr. predicted, pointing to them through the big glass panels of the studio, where, as though in an enormous aquarium, you could see them grouped around the microphone, scripts in hand, ready to begin Chapter 24 of ‘The Alvear Family.’ And what a disappointment it would have been for those housewives who grew misty-eyed on hearing the voice of Luciano Pando if they could have seen his hunchbacked body and his squinty eyes, and what a disappointment for those pensioners to whom the musical murmur of Josefina Sanchez brought back memories if they had known that she had a double chin, a mustache, ears that stuck way out, and varicose veins. But the arrival of television in Peru was still a long way off, and for the moment the modest survival of the fauna of the world of soap operas seemed assured.”[4]

[1] Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, (London: Redwood Burn Limited, 1983), 62.

[2] Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House, (London: Pan Books Limited, 1986), 312-313.

[3] Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House, (London: Pan Books Limited, 1986), 388-389.

[4] Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, (London: Redwood Burn Limited, 1983), 5.