Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa at the Wharton Center

By Claudia Annoni-Monzón

East Lansing: Peruvian, novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist, critic, and one of the central writers in the Latino world—Wharton Center presents Mario Vargas Llosa on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:30PM, at the Cobb Great Hall.

From his first work, Vargas Llosa has used a wide variety of avant-garde techniques to create an aesthetic “double of the real world.” Although Vargas Llosa has followed the tradition of social protest of Peruvian fiction exposing political corruption, machismo, racial prejudices, and violence, he has underlined that a writer should never preach or compromise artistic aims for ideological propaganda.

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Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Perú in 1936 as Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, but was raised in Cochabamba, Bolivia by his mother and maternal grandparents after his parents separated. However, Vargas Llosa once said, that “I feel very much an Arequipan.”

In 1959, he moved to Paris because he felt that in Perú he could not earn his living as a writer. Although the boom of Latin American fiction in the 1960s opened doors to some authors for commercial success, the great majority of Peruvian writers suffered from the problems of the Peruvian publishing industry.

The author has received several prestigious literary awards, including Leopoldo Alas Prize (1959), Rómulo Gallegos Prize (1967), National Critics’ Prize (1967), Peruvian National Prize (1967), Critics’ Annual Prize for Theatre (1981), Prince of Asturias Prize (1986), and Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1994).

His novels include The Time of the Hero (1962; tr. 1966), The Green House (1966; tr. 1968), Conversation in the Cathedral (1969; tr. 1975), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977; tr. 1982), The War of the End of the World (1981; tr. 1982), Death in the Andes (1993; tr. 1996), The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997, tr. 1998), and The Feast of the Goat (2000, tr. 2001). He is also the author of criticism, including The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary (1975; tr. 1986) and Writer's Reality (1991), and essays, such as those in Making Waves (1996).

In 1990, Vargas Llosa was a conservative candidate (Fredemo, the Democratic Front) for the Peruvian presidency. The development of his political convictions, from a sympathizer of Cuban revolution to the liberal right, has astonished his critics and has made it difficult to approach his literature from a single point of view.

The Wharton Center is located at the Campus of MSU, in East Lansing. For more information call 517.432.2000, 1.800.WHARTON or www.whartoncenter.com

Mario Vargas Llosa en East Lansing, Michigan

El escritor, narrador, dramaturgo y ensayista peruano, Mario Vargas Llosa estará dando una presentación en Wharton Center, East Lansing, Michigan, el día Lunes 26 de Febrero de 2007 a las 7:30PM.

Entre sus obras se destacan: La ciudad y los perros (1963), La Tía Julia y el escribidor (1977), La Orgía perpetua (1975) y muchos otros títulos que lo han llevado a recibir varios premios, entre ellos, dos de los máximos galardones que se conceden en el ámbito de las letras hispánicas: el Premio Rómulo Gallegos (1967) y, sobre todo, el Premio Cervantes (1994).

Para más información, llame al 517- 432-2000 o www.whartoncenter.com