As you turn the last page of the most recent book of Mario Vargas Llosa, “I dedicate my silence to him”the reader is faced with the long list of novels that the Nobel Prize published during his lifetime. From his first titles (“The City and the Dogs”, “Conversation in the Cathedral”, “Aunt Julia and the Writer”) to the final ones (“Five Corners” and “Tiempos Recios”), the career of the Peruvian writer has been one of the most prolific and successful of her generation. He was part of Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes, of the Latin American “boom”; he received all the prestigious awards that a literary author can achieve; entered the French Academy and he never ceased to be present with his articles, in all the media in the world.
Since the ’80s, his political activity was also in the news. The communist of youth became a liberal in his maturity and he was even a candidate for president of Peru in the nineties. Today he participates with his statements and writings in the debate of ideas throughout the continent, at the head of the Freedom Foundation, institution he presides. One last piece of news in this regard, in relation to Argentina, found him expressing last days your support for Javier Milei along with a group of former Latin American presidents (Sebastián Piñera, Iván Duque, Felipe Calderón and, of course, Mauricio Macri, among others). “The only way out for Argentina (…) is with the rules of the game of liberal democracy,” stated the text of the letter published by the group.
In recent years, he was also involved in the least expected scandal, starting a relationship with the Spanish socialite, Isabel Preysler, for whom he abandoned the mother of his children, Patricia Llosa. The scandal was repeated after the romance ended, when he became friends with his ex-wife at the end of last year. For now, on so much intimacy, he has closed the curtain.
The last book
On the final page of “I dedicate my silence to him” (Alfaguara), Vargas Llosa writes a brief farewell as an epilogue. He explains there that he completed the draft of the work on April 27, 2022, that he then dedicated himself to correcting it and that he looks forward to visiting the cities in northern Peru where the story takes place. “I think I have already finished this novel,” says that text. Now, I would like to write an essay about Sartre, who was my teacher when I was young. It will be the last thing I will write,” he concludes.
The news that this novel was his final fiction caused an impact. He reminded admirers and critics of the central place that Vargas Llosa occupies in the literature of the continent. And it left a bitter taste in a public accustomed to his constant and controversial presence in the media and bookstores.
What is the book about? It is perhaps his most local work. A fiction in which he reveals, between the lines, nostalgia for his youth and for the culture in which he grew up and was trained. The central character is called Toño Azpilcueta and he is an expert in Peruvian music, poor and humble. One night, at a concert, he discovers a guitarist who dazzles him. From that experience he decides to tell the life of the artist in a book and, at the same time, review the musical history of the country until reaching its most famous genre: the waltz, the same one that Chabuca Granda made famous in the world. To describe the feeling that music awakens in the people of his land, he uses an untranslatable term “huachafería”. This word will be central to Azpilcueta’s aesthetic ideas. “It is a Peruvian variant of kitsch, a caricature of certain forms that are in the way of speaking, of feeling, of being informed, of expressing oneself, and that permeates everything: politics, culture, society,” is how Vargas defined it. Llosa in an interview. In Azpilcueta’s delirious theory, it is this popular, excessive and corny feeling that best defines Peruvian culture, the one that brings together all social classes in the same emotion.
“I have always worked in literature and close to literature. “It has been a passion, a total dedication, my discipline, my dedication, my fun, my commitment, everything,” the writer confessed after the publication of his book, regarding his farewell to fiction. The title of his latest novel says, better than any statement, the exact words that announce his farewell.
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