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Vargas Llosa

Thomas Jones

Mario Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the LRB archive you can read Michael Wood on The Feast of the Goat, Lorna Scott Fox on The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, Philip Horne on The Perpetual Orgy, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, The War of the End of the World and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, John Sturrock on The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, and Ronan Bennett on Vargas Llosa's political ambitions (and the Shining Path).


Comments


  • 8 October 2010 at 10:10am
    A.J.P. Crown says:
    If nobody else has anything to say about Vargas Llosa winning a Nobel prize, I'm going to say my piece: he should really bag that side-parting. It's never too late.

  • 11 October 2010 at 6:47am
    pinhut says:
    I just lament his pro-military dictatorship intervention in Guatemala that showed he literally knew nothing about the country.

    What has struck me in the reaction is that people continue to call him an opponent of totalitarianism, for example, or a voice for freedom, when Vargos Llosa has a tradition of uncritical boot-licking. Just this year, he was intervening in Chile to offer his support to an unrepentant ex-member of Pinochet's regime who is running for President.

    Why can't he just concern himself with Peru? rather than this continual use of his literary prestige to boost those in countries he knows nothing about, but who just happen to share his ideology. Instead, he overflows his rightful influence due to the basic fact of a shared language.

    • 11 October 2010 at 6:50am
      pinhut says: @ pinhut
      As if his endorsement was not enough, Vargas Llosa then followed-up by appearing at the opening of a museum to honour Pinochet's victims (as guest of the newly elected right-wing President).

      http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=350264&CategoryId=14094

  • 12 October 2010 at 7:15pm
    Geoff Roberts says:
    You're dead right on the parting, what I want to know is when he's going to apologise to China for receiving the award when a Chinese writer should have got it.