In a report for The New York Times, Julie Bosman wrote that Mr. Vargas Llosa “is one of the most celebrated writers of the Spanish-speaking world, frequently mentioned with his contemporary Gabríel Garcia Márquez, who won the literature Nobel in 1982, the last South American to do so.”
Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the academy, told The Associated Press that Mr. Vargas Llosa “is a divinely gifted story-teller,” whose writing touches the reader. “He is one of the big authors in the Spanish-speaking world,” Mr. Englund added.
In an essay published in The New York Times in 1984, Mr. Vargas Llosa addressed the question of whether his fiction “was true,” writing:
In fact, novels do lie – they can’t help doing so – but that’s only one part of the story. The other is that, through lying, they express a curious truth, which can only be expressed in a veiled and concealed fashion, masquerading as what it is not. This statement has the ring of gibberish. But actually it’s quite simple. Men are not content with their lot and nearly all – rich or poor, brilliant or mediocre, famous or obscure – would like to have a life different from the one they lead. To (cunningly) appease this appetite, fiction was born. It is written and read to provide human beings with lives they’re unresigned to not having. The germ of every novel contains an element of non-resignation and desire.
A New York Times profile of Mario Vargas Llosa from 2002 written by Mel Gussow can be found here.
A New York Times magazine profile of Mr. Vargas Llosa from 1989 written by Gerald Marzorati can be found here.
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