For almost a year, the world-renowned Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been writing for the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, covering cultural affairs and themes in intellectual life, without ignoring urgent political issues, including the war in Ukraine.
The Nobel literature laureate’s column blends his knowledge and life experience with his narrative skills as a writer, honed since his debut novel "The City and the Dogs", and also touches upon names that have influenced human culture and the world of books.
Llosa, who is almost 90 years old, often reviews his own reading and records his thoughts and observations. Throughout, he blends the personal with the general, tackling complex issues in a straightforward fashion.
In this space allocated to the great writer to reach the Arab reader, Llosa’s personality shines through. He has long been writing about life in general and is now here bringing his visions and perceptions into Arabic, with a characteristic clarity of mind and fluidity of language.
Major influences: Nietzsche, Sartre and Flaubert
In some of his articles, Llosa goes back to the biographies of his forebears, the writers and philosophers who have shaped his literary experience.
He talks in one article about an encounter in the 1970s with an old bookseller, when he used to buy from him, Les Temps Modernes magazine, which Jean-Paul Sartre published.
Llosa writes: “When I reminded him of those distant years and Sartre, he surprisingly replied: ‘Sartre! Nobody reads his works today.’”.
Llosa says he finds it “difficult to accept the old bookseller’s theory that no one reads Sartre these days. It’s impossible. He is one of the great thinkers of France, as evidenced by his novels and research, in which he was unique and went beyond the usual intellectual and literary traditions.”
In another article, Llosa describes the details of his visit to the museum of the German philosopher Nietzsche, set up in Nietzsche’s beloved part of the Swiss Alps, the Sils Maria region.
He “was amazed by its pure air, the mysteries hidden in its soaring mountains, the murmur of its waterfalls, the stillness of its lakes, and the squirrels and wild cats that wandered there.”
It was here that Nietzsche wrote his most important books, such as "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", "Beyond Good" and "Evil and The Decline of Idols". He used to stay there in a house that has now been converted into a museum and houses the institution that bears the name of the philosopher, which deserves a careful visit, according to Llosa.
Llosa tells his readers that he learned the technique of writing a novel from Flaubert: “A few hours after my arrival in Paris, one day in the last century, I bought a copy of "Madame Bovary". After spending the whole night reading it, I realised at dawn what kind of writer I wanted to be and that thanks to Flaubert I began to see all the secrets of the novel’s art”.
