The writer Mario Vargas Llosa is hospitalized in Madrid for Covid-19 for the second time since last year. The 87-year-old Peruvian-Spanish was admitted to the hospital on Saturday and his children asked the media to respect his privacy.
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The novelist Mario Vargas Llosa entered a Madrid hospital on Saturday, where he remains hospitalized for Covid-19, as his children reported on Twitter this Monday, July 4.
The statement confirmed the hospitalization “in view of the media’s interest in the state of health” of the writer. The children assured that “He is being treated by excellent professionals and accompanied by his family” and asked to “respect his privacy at this time” and that of his family.
In view of the interest of the media in our father’s state of health, we make public that he has been hospitalized since Saturday after being diagnosed with Covid-19. He is being treated by excellent professionals and accompanied by his family. We urge the media…
— Álvaro Vargas Llosa (@AlvaroVargasLl) July 3, 2023
The 87-year-old Peruvian-Spanish Nobel Prize winner for literature had already been hospitalized for a few days for Covid-19 in April 2022, after which he had recovered. Details about the evolution of the writer’s current state of health are still awaited.
Vargas Llosa lives in Madrid and was seen in Peru a few weeks ago with his children and his ex-wife Patricia Llosa. At this time, former Peruvian Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano had also shared a photograph of Vargas Llosa signing his affiliation to the new anti-Fujimorismo and right-wing Libertad Popular party.
“We are pleased to inform that our most illustrious compatriot, Mario Vargas Llosa, a great defender of freedom and democratic values, has joined Libertad Popular. It is an honor that he joins the cause of our party”, had expressed its founder Pedro Cateriano.
Nobel Prize for Literature
Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936 and spent his childhood between this country and Bolivia. He studied literature and law and was both a writer, a journalist and a politician.
Vargas Llosa is the author of works such as ‘The city and the dogs’ and ‘La fiesta del Chivo’. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 but also other prizes such as the Cervantes Prize in 1994 and the Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras in 1986.
In 1990, Vargas Llosa won the first round of the Peruvian presidential election with his Movimiento Libertad party before losing the second round to Alberto Fujimori.
If Vargas Llosa began by supporting Marxist ideology, he later became a pro-capitalist and critic of the socialist governments of Latin America, which has sparked controversy in the region.
Vargas Llosa collaborated with the Spanish newspaper ‘El País’ and obtained Spanish nationality in March 1993. A few weeks ago, he also received the nationality of the Dominican Republic, which inspired his successful novel “La fiesta del chivo”.
The novelist this year became the first Spanish-language author to enter the highly elitist French Language Academy. In his speech, he assured that “thanks to France”, he discovered “another Latin America”.
“The novel will save democracy or it will sink with it and disappear. It will always remain – who can doubt it? – that caricature that totalitarian countries sell us as novels, but that only exist once they have passed through the censorship that mutilates them, to prop up the ghostly institutions of similar antics of democracy that Vladimir Putin’s Russia exemplifies,” the writer said in his speech upon entering the French Academy.
With EFE, AFP and local media
