The naturalized Spanish Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, 86, Nobel Prize for Literature 2010, was hospitalized “a few days ago” in a Madrid clinic after contracting the coronavirus. Thanks to the treatment, his conditions “evolve favorably”. This was announced by his son, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who with the other two brothers is in the hospital alongside his famous father.
“A few days ago, due to complications caused by Covid, he was hospitalized in a clinic in Madrid,” the son wrote on Twitter. “Thanks to the treatment, his condition is evolving favorably,” he added. Mario Vargas Llosa and his family “are grateful for the expressions of affection we are receiving and we ask the press to respect his privacy”, reads always on Twitter.
Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936 in Arequipa, Peru, and currently lives in Madrid after a long period in London. Writer, critic and journalist, he is a central figure in the rebirth of Hispano-American fiction, a polemicist end. In Italy his entire literary work is published by Einaudi. Active in civil and political battles, he ran for the presidential elections of Peru in 1990 (the account of that experience is “Fish in the water” 1993). Collaborator of several European newspapers, lecturer in many universities around the world, in 1994 he assumed Spanish citizenship; he has received prestigious awards including the Prince of Asturias, Cervantes, Grinzane-Cavour Lifetime Achievement Awards and the presidency of the Pen Club International. A very prolific author, he has published articles, essays (on García Marquez and Flaubert), plays and fiction of various kinds. “The city and the dogs” (1963) is his irreverent debut novel: burned in the streets in Peru, it gets widespread acclaim in Europe. He was followed by “The Green House” (1966) and the political novel “Conversation in the Cathedral” (1969). “Pantaleón and the visitors” (1973) inaugurates a subtle, sometimes comic, ironic register, which also includes “Aunt Julia and the scribbler” (1977). He experimented with the yellow genre with a social implication (“Who killed Palomino Molero?”, 1986).
Among his latest works: “The goat party” (2000), “Heaven is elsewhere” (2003), “Adventures of the bad girl” (2006), poignant story of love and escape, “The Celt’s dream” (2011), Roger Casement’s fictional biography, “The Civilization of Entertainment” (2013), “Crossroads” (2016), “The Call of the Tribe” (2019) and “Hard Times” (2020).