Happy this morning

I'm pleased this morning by something completely unrelated to cycling: Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (his website) was awarded the Nobel in literature. It was high time -- he had been in the short list every years since the 1980s and there was the nagging suspicion that his politics were a consideration in not awarding him the prize.

A couple of his political/historical novels (that I enjoyed):

• Conversación en la Catedral / Conversation in the Cathedral - set during the dictatorship of Manuel OdrÃ*a, Peru in the 1950
• La Guerra del Fin del Mundo / The War at the End of the World - set in the Brazil backlands, late 1800s, in Canudos
• La Fiesta del Chivo / The Feast of the of the Goat - set in the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, last days of the Trujillo dictatorship. He was interviewed by Charlie Rose in 2001, following the publication of the English edition.

Other well known novels:

• La Ciudad y los Perros / The Time of the Hero -- life in a military school
• La Tia Julia y el Escribidor / Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter -- if you are close to 50 years old, you'll get a kick out of this book
• Pantaleón y las Visitadoras / Captain Pantoja and the Special Service -- a military operation to establish a 'special service' (prostitutes) for a garrison

One of his first publications was a fabulous short story, Los Cachorros (The Cubs), very much worth reading and a staple in many a literature class in Peru.

Interesting; thanks for posting. I had just read about this author and realized I know nothing about him.

I'm looking forward to his forthcoming novel, another historical one: El Sueño del Celta (the English tentative title is the "Celtic Dream" but the Spanish one would actually translate to "The Celt's Dream"). It's about Sir Roger Casement. For any Spanish speaker, the article and pictures in El PaÃ*s is quite nice.

Last note... another great historical novel he wrote was El ParaÃ*so en la Otra Esquina (The Way to Paradise), interspersing chapters about a Flora Tristán, an 1800s socialist and activist (considered a founder of modern feminism), the daughter of a Peruvian colonel of the Spanish Navy, and other chapters about her grandson, painter Paul Gauguin.