Mario Vargas Llosa “evolves favorably” after hospitalization in Madrid due to COVID-19

The Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa is admitted to a clinic in Madrid for complications related to the coronavirus and “evolves favorably”, his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa announced this Friday on Twitter.

“A few days ago, in view of some complications related to Covid, he was admitted to a clinic in Madrid,” wrote the 86-year-old son of the writer, specifying that “thanks to treatment, his condition evolves favorably.”

“He and his family are grateful for the tokens of affection we are receiving and we ask the press to respect their privacy,” concludes the message signed by his children Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana.

Vargas Llosa presented in early April in Madrid his latest book, “The Quiet Look (by Pérez Galdós)”, an essay about the Spanish writer Benito Pérez Galdós, which he had to take to the Buenos Aires Book Fair (April 28-May 16).

In addition, he was scheduled to participate next week in the Madrid presentation of a biography of Santiago Muñoz Machado's “Cervantes”, which was postponed.

THE LAST BOOM

Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2010, Vargas Llosa is the last representative of the golden generation of Latin American literature.

A universal writer based on the complex Peruvian reality, Vargas Llosa was part of the so-called Latin American 'boom' along with other greats such as Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, Argentina's Julio Cortázar and Mexicans Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo.

Born in the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa on March 28, 1936 to a middle-class family, he was educated by his mother and maternal grandparents in Cochabamba (Bolivia) and later in Peru.

After studying at the Military Academy of Lima, he obtained a degree in Letters and took his first steps in journalism at a very young age.

He settled in 1959 in Paris, where he married his political aunt Julia Urquidi, 10 years older (who would later inspire “La Tía Julia and the Writer”) and worked in several professions: translator, Spanish teacher and journalist for the Agence France-Presse.

Years later, he broke up with Urquidi and married his first cousin and niece of his ex-wife, Patricia Llosa, with whom he had three children and fifty years of relationship until 2015, when he divorced her and joined Isabel Preysler, former wife of singer Julio Iglesias.

Between 1970 and 1974 he lived in Barcelona, where he met and was a great friend of García Márquez, until they distanced themselves because of a personal matter about which there are many versions.

PROLIFIC WRITER

Vargas Llosa is the author of novels, short stories, a volume of memoirs, essays, plays, poetry books and press articles, which he still frequently publishes weekly in the Spanish newspaper El País.

His long literary career began in 1959, when he published his first book of stories, 'Los jefes', with which he won the Leopoldo Alas Prize. But it gained notoriety with the publication of the novel 'The City and the Dogs', in 1963, followed three years later by 'The Green House'. His prestige was consolidated with his novel 'Conversation in the Cathedral' (1969).

They followed 'Pantaleón and the visitors', 'Aunt Julia and the writer', 'The war at the end of the world', 'Who killed Palomino Molero? ' , 'Lituma en los Andes' and 'The Fish in the Water' (memoirs of his election campaign), 'La fiesta del chivo' or 'The dream of the celta', published shortly before receiving the Nobel Prize.

Vargas Llosa obtained Spanish nationality in 1993.

(With information from AFP)

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