Mario was a worthy literary rival to Gabriel

With the death of Peru’s novelist and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa at the age of 89 in Lima on Sunday, another star from the constellation of shining Latin American writers falls off. The other was Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The two were friends and ideological rivals. While Marquez was a much celebrated author in literary circles across the globe for his ‘magical realism’, Llosa was read, appreciated and respected for his literary genius among many readers in the same literary circles.

Llosa’s style did not practise magical realism, but his narrative style was bold and brisk, touched the raw nerve of the reader to the quick, and told tales with a touch of casualness but there was nothing casual about them. Llosa practised the serious art of telling an important story with realistic overtones and moral implications, which were nuanced and even grey. This has to do with his relations to politics, which was more complicated than of Marquez.

Marquez had stuck to the generally acceptable leftist political spectrum, of critiquing capitalism with a gentle touch and with his innate sympathy for the poor and the oppressed. The touchstone of the writer’s political commitment in Latin America was one’s attitude towards the Cuban Revolution of 1960 and its leader Fidel Castro. Marquez remained an unwavering friend of Castro till the last. Llosa supported the Cuban Revolution and Castro. But he turned against Cuba, Castro and leftist politics because of the meaningless violence unleashed by the Shining Path, a leftist guerrilla movement in Peru. Llosa entered politics and fought the Peruvian presidential elections on the issue in 1980. He lost the election to the political outsider Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori managed to curb the violence of Shining Path, and restored political and economic stability in Peru. But this came at a price. Fujimori became ruthless and killed people illegally and without compunction in the name of putting down leftist violence. He also became corrupt. He was tried and convicted, and later allowed to leave prison due to his age and he died in 2024.

Fujimori becomes a factor in Llosa’s public life. Llosa was deeply disappointed by his electoral defeat, but it is not clear how he intended to tackle the leftist violence of the Shining Path. But Llosa soon recovered from his political trauma and realised that his calling was literature and not politics. And he remained the supreme master of his art.

He continued to write stories that held the attention of the reader because of the unfailing verve in his narration. He depicted the joie de vivre of life. It is not surprising that the conservative establishment in Peru and in Latin America loved him. It would not be right to call him a rightist because he was one in politics but not in literature.

His novels do not gloss over the moral ambiguities of life. This was best portrayed in his novella, “In Praise of My Step-Mother” where evil and eroticism cast a long shadow. The narration mesmerises but the uneasiness in the mind of the reader remains. This requires an artist who sees clearly the many shades of life.

Like a true artist, Llosa had the ability and capacity to look at life with clear eyes. This is what makes him a great writer. Latin American countries have been through political storms through the 20th century, and these unstable times threw up literary masters like Marquez and Llosa. It is a matter of great satisfaction that they viewed things from different political perspectives. As a result, we have novels very different from each, each one of them brilliant.