In 1974, after nearly two decades of living in Paris, London, and Barcelona, Vargas Llosa moved back to Peru and, shocking many fans in the literary world, declared his adherence to neoliberalism. He endorsed its emphasis on individual rights, a free market, and a small government, despite the fact that neoliberalism had been forcefully applied by military regimes across Latin America. (He had become an admirer of the conservative economic policies of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.) In the late nineteen-eighties, he went a step further and founded a political party, Movimiento Libertad, in opposition to President Alan García’s attempt to nationalize the banking system. In the 1990 elections, he ran for President against Alberto Fujimori, campaigning on austerity programs and the privatization of state-owned industries.
!neolibs we get to claim an artist for once
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Vargas Llosa has been right wing since the 1980s, is just that he always opposed the military dictatorships in Latam, basically he’s not a wingcuck, he even supported the leftist Ollanta Humala against Keiko Fujimori in 2011 and only supported Fujimori in 2021’s second round because the other candidate was an ignorant commie with ties to the shining path. The journo behind this article is either blind or an r-slur.
I love his books by the way. Conversación en la Catedral is a masterpiece
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is the translation still worth it?
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I have no idea because I read it in Spanish, so I can’t attest the quality of the translation, but possibly yes, the story is very interesting and he transports you into 1950s and 1960s Lima. Is set during the dictatorship of general Manuel Odría. The main character is a contrarian mediocre upper class student who becomes a commie because of a girl and then leaves the party after been arrested. It is also about his father’s driver, a black peruvian and the housemaid, more information and I’ll spoil you.
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Vargas Llosa is super based
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Should I read one of his books?
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Yes, his best works are Conversation in the Cathedral, The War of the End of the World and The Feast of the Goat.
The War of the End of the World is set in Brazil and is considered by many to be his Magnus Opus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_End_of_the_World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_in_the_Cathedral
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Cool thanks
Btw do you have any recommendations on books that are like Hemingway's stuff (strong male characters type thing) but more modern? I haven't read much modern literature, mostly just classics.
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I never read Hemingway’s books so I don’t know what could be comparable, I also only started more modern literature in the past 6 months, the exception been LATAM writers like Borges and Vargas Llosa. Maybe Cormac Mccarthy? He’s probably not Hemingway’s genre but he has strong male leads.
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Yeah its always easier to go to a book store and find some older book that has 10k good reviews on Amazon/good reads than risk a >2000s book.
I read "All the Pretty Horses" a while back in my western phase. Maybe I'll try another one of his. Or maybe one of those Japanese writers (skipping the Faust one cuz I'm not ready to commit to that yet).
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Darn, I’m kind of considering the same thing. I think I’ll skip one bookclub choice and then go to the next and them take a break again.
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you got like 20 people to read a book already on an incel dating site, that's something. Wouldn't worry too much, we'll still be here.
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Snapshots:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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