Great novels never actually seem to tell us anything; rather, they make us live it and share in it by virtue of their persuasive powers. This is what Mario Vargas Llosa advises to aspiring writers in his book ¨Letters to a young novelist¨. It is certainly true in my case. His novels, among others, have persuaded me to become ¨Passionate about Latin America¨. I have read most of his novels, essays and his autobiography. His characters live in my imagination. His stories keep taking me on virtual journeys across Latin America, the land of Magical Realism.
In his autobiography "A fish in the water" written in 1993 he has given a glimpse of his evolution as a writer. When he mentioned his interest in becoming a writer, his father was against it. His father believed that 'writers and poets were all drunks and faggots’. So he sent the 14-year old Llosa to a Military Academy to make a proper man out of him. He took a revenge on his father by making the military academy as the subject of his first novel 'The Time of the Hero'!. But Llosa’s narratives about the underground unsavory activities in the academy enraged the administration. They rounded up 1000 copies of the book and set them on fire in an official ceremony. But a judge for Spain's prestigious Premio Biblioteca Breve Prize declared it "the best novel in the Spanish language in the past 30 years”. The Time of the Hero was among the first sensations of a transformative age of Latin American literature known as the Boom which included other major writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes.
Llosa had a parallel career as a journalist. He started writing for La Cronica newspaper of Lima from the age of fourteen. He has written numerous coloumns and opinion pieces in many newspapers and magazines. Llosa says, “ journalism has the other side of my literary career”
.jpeg)
