Mario Vargas Llosa will release his next book of essays, A Barbarian in Paris.

Alfaguara will publish a book “Barbarian in Paris”, an anthology of essays and articles written by Mario Vargas Llosa on French culture and his entry into the world French Academy.

This is the first time that an author who did not write in French becomes “immortal” after being admitted to the Académie française. The anthology of essays and articles includes a welcoming speech delivered today by the author upon taking possession of Chair No. 18 of the Académie française.

“French literature has been and remains the best. The bravest, the freest, […] one that does not obey the present, one that regulates and controls the dreams of living beings,” he comments.

Literary myths and intellectual dynamism in France seduced Mario Vargas Llosa early in his career, to such an extent that he came to the conclusion that he would become a writer only if he came to Paris and managed to acclimatize in an environment that gave art and thought a privileged place.

The novels of Dumas and Flaubert opened his imagination and inclined him towards realism, while the ideas of Sartre, Camus, Bataille, Aron and Revel showed him what a public intellectual should be like.

A new book

As Carlos Granes points out in the prologue to this book, “his intellectual and cultural training gave him the confidence that any Latin American writer, even one born in a Peruvian province (barbarian), could participate in all political, cultural and social affairs.” “of his time, if he fed on solid literary and philosophical traditions. In search of France, Vargas Llosa found his homeland and the whole world.”

A selection of essays that make up ‘Barbarian in Paris’, published by Alfaguara on February 23, explains this devotion to French culture, which led Vargas Llosa to become the first foreign-language author to be awarded the highest honor for French-speaking writers: one of the “immortals”. For this reason, the volume ends with an opening speech at the French Academy, delivered by the author in Paris.

Below is an excerpt from Carlos Granes’ prologue:

“When Octavio Paz said that Paris is the cultural capital of Latin America, he did not exaggerate at all. Not only because the atmosphere of the city encouraged creativity, but also because, through meeting with creators from all over the continent, artists and writers discovered that they were something more than Peruvians, Colombians, Argentines or Mexicans: they were Latin Americans. – for dazzling Paris. Mario Vargas Llosa survived this syndrome with incomparable ardor. The attraction that France exerted on him began in childhood, continued in youth, entrenched in adulthood, and continues to this day, to the point where he has always given more importance to inclusion in the Pleiades Library, the pantheon of French literature, than to winning the Nobel Prize. Those authors who remain safe from time and oblivion entered this collection were his first literary passions. As a child, he began with Jules Verne and Alejandro Dumas, then with the works of Victor Hugo, and then with the works of Gustave Flaubert; and from all of them he learned invaluable lessons: the fury of adventure with the saga of d’Artagnan, the great ambition and romantic sensibility of Outcastsliterary realism thanks to Madame Bovary. […] In 1959, having just settled in Paris, the aspiring writer bought a copy of Madame Bovary in the edition of Clasicos Garnier, and there, as he himself said in an essay that he devoted many years later to the novel, eternal orgybegan his story. In addition to the charm of persuasive power Madame Bovary (and eternally in love with Emma), Vargas Llosa also discovered the type of writer he wanted to be, a realist, an expert at spoofing reality rather than fantasy. And not only this. pages Madame Bovary they taught him a crucial lesson in storytelling technique. Flaubert realized one fundamental thing, namely that the most important character in a novel, to whom the writer should pay the most attention, was the narrator who told the story. This was Flaubert’s contribution to fiction; With this discovery, he marked the milestone that gave rise to the modern novel.

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