Jamie Bailey on his novel Los genios: “This is not an act of hostility, malice or retribution”

In February 1976, in a cinema in the Mexican capital, Mario Vargas Llosa punched his friend before that. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and they never spoke to each other again, a fact that the Peruvian writer Jaime Bailey, who knew both of them, revealed in the course of “an autopsy of a dead friendship.”

Bailey (Lima, 1965) analyzes this friendship and its end in his novel “Genius’ (Galaxia Gutenberg), which he presented this Tuesday in Madrid (Spain).

This work will be published in Spain, Argentina, USA, Chile, Colombia and Mexico and will be translated into Italian and German. It will also be released in Peru under the editorial label Revuelta.

The author assured that the Peruvian Nobel laureate also slapped his son Alvaro six years after the García Márquez episode, in what he called a “great ego fight.”

“So I thought that Vargas Llosa He’s a genius, but he’s also a volcano,” Bailey said.

“Geniuses”, the “riskiest” novel

This is his “most risky, dangerous and ambitious” novel, after 25 years of gathering evidence and interviewing friends of both writers to try to solve the “mystery” that obsesses him: why were they fighting? Why did Mario give him a broken Gabo? Why have they been enemies for the rest of their lives since then?

García Márquez and Vargas Llosa met at Caracas airport in August 1967.

At 31, Vargas Llosa was already a critically acclaimed writer, and García Márquez, at 40, finally achieved publishing success with One Hundred Years of Solitude, published the same year in Buenos Aires.

They used to read each other with admiration and became close friends, especially after living next door in Barcelona.

But the friendship was forever overshadowed after Vargas Llosa hit Garcia Márquez, to whom he said: “It’s because of what you did to Patricia.”

Jamie Bailey He recounted how Vargas Llosa had two “disappointments” on political issues with García Márquez during those years, but he dismisses both of these issues as “jealousy or literary envy” because he considers the Peruvian incapable of doing so.

And he added that in 1975 there was a night in a Madrid nightclub where they Patricia Llosawhich was then separated from Mario Vargas LlosaGarcía Márquez, literary agent Carmen Balcells, and recently deceased writer Jorge Edwards, where, as he recounts in the novel, “some things happened that are the source of the shock.”

Jamie Bailey “freed” to write his novel

The author admitted that he had no evidence for what he claims in his novel, but he did collect evidence “regarding geniuses and historical facts”.

He also told how agent Carmen Balcells went to great lengths to get them to reconcile and so far Garcia Marquez was ready, Vargas Llosa was not.

Bailey, who says he was a friend of Vargas Llosa and his family until they had “several disagreements over political issues,” said he would like them to read the novel because it was done “with admiration and respect.” “. although he knows that Vargas Llosa told a reporter about this play that it was sure to be a bunch of lies.

For this reason, he stated that he had now written a novel because, being a close friend, he would not take risks: “Since I have become estranged from them, I have felt liberated.”

Although Jamie Bailey he assured that he would like to renew friendly relations with them and that they do not understand his work as “an act of hostility, resentment or retribution”.

(According to EFE).

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