The Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, the most awaited guest of the second day, tells the unedited background of ‘Tempi hard’, his latest novel published in Italy by Einaudi and makes us reflect on how important literature is in the uncertain times in which we live. of the Small and Medium Publishing Fair More Freer Books, at the Nuvola dell’Eur in Rome.
“The situation we are experiencing has created many uncertainties.
During the pandemic, in which we were forced to be confined at home, many rediscovered the value of literature. In many countries they have sold more books. Culture creates sensitivity, “Vargas Llosa, 85, elegant and always ready to smile, explained to ANSA.” The symbol of freedom in a society is always literature. When there is freedom, literature flourishes and when it fails it suffers a lot “underlines the Nobel Prize. And he adds that freedom, the leitmotif of this edition of the fair which is celebrating 20 years,” is inseparable from literature.
The Peruvian writer, author of ‘The city and the dogs’, ‘Aunt Julia and the hack’, ‘Heaven is elsewhere’ and ‘Adventures of the bad girl’, friend and then enemy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is very happy that his books are appreciated in Italy. “It is a country that I like very much even though, each time, I have been visiting for a short time. I appreciate the country, the people, the Italians have a lot of fun,” he explains.
The story told in ‘Hard times’ is complex, in which it traces the coup d’état that in 1954 in Guatemala brought down the reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz to put in its place a dictator appreciated by the CIA and the United Fruit Company, the future Chiquita. All this thanks to a huge fake news that made Arbenz pass for a communist in the service of the USSR.
“One day in my life I arrive in the Dominican Republic and immediately I am invited to a dinner by a lady. I had no idea it was a dinner with several guests, I did not expect it and this had irritated me. So I tried to find a point, a corner where I could sit, which would allow me to leave without being noticed. I actually couldn’t because as soon as I sat down a man approached me and said, I have a story for you, which you can tell. horrified. When you are asked for these things and you do them the result is usually bad. This person was Toni Raful Tejada, the ambassador of the Dominican Republic to Italy and he told me a story about the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo that I had written in ‘La festa del caprone’ but with details that I didn’t know and they surprised me a lot. The relationship between Trujillo and the Republic of Guatemala were unknown. And this is where this great story begins “, said Varga s Llosa of the genesis of ‘Hard times’. And then he focused on the figure of Martita Borrero Parra, lover of the dictator Castillo Armas, who became a famous political columnist in the Dominican Republic. “Maybe she herself had helped the CIA but she always denied it,” Llosa explained.
Now the Nobel Prize, who at the fair, for the return of the new ‘IIla-Literature 2021’ Prize, awarded the writer Samanta Schweblin for her book ‘Kentuki’ (Sur) and the translator Laura Scarabelli for the translation of ‘Manodopera’ ( Alessandro Polidoro Editore) by Diamela Eltit, is working “on an essay on a Spanish narrator who was very important for Spain, but little known in the rest of Europe, Benito Perez Galdos whose 200th anniversary is now”, says before getting into the car and leaving the Cloud
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Source From: Ansa
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