Mario Vargas Llosa…Has Died

Mario Vargas Llosa, the last of the great writers of the Latin American boom has died. The icon of what it supposedly means to be a great novelist has died. The genius has died. The pompous man who won every award ever created for writers—Nobel included—has died. The man who received the title of Marquis in Spain has died. The man who knocked García Márquez unconscious with a punch over a matter the two never revealed—yes, it was probably something related to a woman—has died. The man who wanted to be president of his native Peru has died. The author of some twenty novels that practically border on perfection has died. The man who knew he was one of the best writers in the world and who believed—in many ways—in a morality tale—political, social, whatever—just because he was a “remarkable writer” has died. The man who married his aunt-in-law, his cousin, and Enrique Inglesias’s mother, and had far more lovers than published works, has died.

Mario Vargas Llosa has died and I know he would have liked to read something so dramatic and solemn, since he was…very dramatic and solemn.

I always say that I was never a big reader, follower, or fan of the authors of the Latin American boom; but I read them all and all their works. They all represented some essential part of Latin culture. And each had an amazing, highly personal style that they imbued every novel or short story with. And now that the last of them has died, perhaps the most… I’m trying to describe Vargas Llosa, the man, or at least the vision I always had of him: a guy who knew he was great and who—considering he was even a presidential candidate in Peru—maintained a larger-than-life superiority aura.

He never seemed humble to me; he seemed very political, very judgmental. However, he was a true master of writing and the author of three books that I’ve reread so many times that they must already have a small space in my brain: La Ciudad y los Perros (The Time of the Hero, 1963); La Casa Verde (The Green House, 1965) and Conversación en la Catedral (Conversation in The Cathedral, 1969). Yes, obviously I can name at least ten Vargas Llosa novels that are tremendous, remarkable, wonderful, etc.

But these three novels, the first three he published, are my favorites for many reasons; among them, perhaps because he wrote them before becoming the gigantic, all-powerful Nobel Prize winner who the world treated and praised like a king… Although, to be fair, from the moment he published his first novel, the world already considered him a standout. And rightfully so.

I’m not going to waste paragraphs on his political vision, his achievements or failures as a person, or his Jupiter-sized ego. I want to pay fitting tribute to those three works that laid the groundwork for what would be, until the day of his death—April 13, 2025—a colossus of worldwide literature.

A Collection of Works To Rival Any Writer’s

“La Ciudad y Los Perros,” translated into English as The Time of the Hero, was a revelation to me as a young reader. The semi-autobiographical story of his time at a military boarding school still resonates in my memory. A brutal, visceral, direct novel, but written with the precision of a surgeon. The fear, the alienation, the death, and the forced control by the (military) teachers exposed not only what happened there, in that claustrophobic universe that could destroy the personality, dreams, emotions, and possible futures of young people… But at the same time, it served to discipline and correct others. That was the great duality, amidst a plot that hit you like a punch from a young Mike Tyson.

And it was that nakedness, in writing about the depth of pain and emotional storms that every teenager goes through, that drew me to that book. It created an unbreakable bond.  Vargas Lllosa never wrote anything like that again. And he didn’t have to; there, in those pages, was everything, with a grandeur and power that will extend until civilization ceases to exist.

The Time of the Hero is a reflection of life at an age when any decision, right or wrong, can seal the rest of your life; with the terrible added bonus of  subjection to military power. And since its publication, for many, Vargas Llosa has become that hero…or at least the spokesperson for those who wanted not only to be heroes, but at least survivors.

His main themes were: Corruption and all the evils caused by the lust for power, women, romances frowned upon by society (he was a legendary womanizer), history, and reminders of everything that has screwed us over as a society and from which we have never learned anything. The Green House is much more than a novel about a brothel; between jungle and desert, it reveals open, human, and flawed characters, but the greatest flaws are those of the system, those of the institutions, those of the government. Vargas Llosa didn’t write about perfect people, people who don’t exist; his triumph was achieving social scrutiny with immaculate prose.

And Conversation in The Cathedral is a simply fabulous monster-superb-novel that tears away the rotten petals of a dictatorship.

I always respected that he was against Fidel Castro (although he initially supported him) and that he wasn’t afraid to criticize García Márquez for having Castro as his best friend. The rest of Vargas Llosa’s work is equally impressive. The entire planet should read every one of his two dozen novels.

But he became a celebrity, and although this never diminished his quality as a writer, Vargas Llosa, the character who appeared everywhere surrounded by rich, important, and famous people, was as interesting as his novels or even more.

Although I’ve never believed in the whole hermit-like writer-who-writes-90-novels-and-spends-his-life-on-it (Balzac), I was always a little uneasy about the sort of courtship that arose around Vargas Llosa, whom I was about to interview many years ago, but after almost four hours of waiting, I preferred to leave and interview several bottles of beer.

But that’s how it is with intellectuals, although very little like him. He was a Man in Full; not a novelist, a writer, but a genuine intellectual, a thinker. Perhaps the last of a line, at least in the Latin-Hispanic context, although he was a man of the world. He stopped being labeled “Latino” a long time ago; this guy was Mario Vargas Llosa! And that was worth more than anything else, since it was synonymous with someone who took full advantage of life, squeezed it, and became a figure on a level few will ever reach.

I know that from time to time I’ll browse through his early novels, as always, with the same excitement I felt the first time I walked through those marvelous literary skyscrapers filled with window to immerse myself in the great adventure of introspection; built with the incomparable architecture of his prose.

 Yes, one of the real ones, one of the originals… has died. RIP.