There is Something About Mario

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977,Trans. 1982): A satire on ’50s popular culture and politics,La tía Julia y el escribidor epitomises Llosa’s middle phase of “humour” and his stylistic experimentations. It’s also partly autobiographical. The Julia of the title is inspired by Julia Urquidi,Llosa’s first wife,and the protagonist Mario,working at a radio station,hopes to become a famous writer. Aunt Julia,a widow,and the protagonist’s escapades light up the tragic career of Pedro Camacho,a Bolivian playwright hired as a scriptwriter at the station. Camacho,who spellbinds Peruvians with his soaps (integrated into the narrative),is found a decrepit wreck by a successful Mario years later. Urquidi wrote a contrapuntal memoir telling her audience What Little Vargas Didn’t Say,notably her gifts and how she helped the real Mario become a writer.

The War of the End of the World (1981,Trans. 1984): Llosa’s most ambitious effort and the beginning of his last phase,La guerra del fin del mundo has 19th century Brazil as its setting. It’s a historical novel fictionalising the War of Canudos. An anti-republican,millenarian cult,inspired and instigated by the teachings of Antonio Conselheiro,fends off assault after assault by the military in a town they’ve built in Canudos,ravaged by economic decline and poverty. In the end,the fire of destruction engulfs everything. An insightful examination of human behaviour and the bounds of rationality,this book is Llosa’s own favourite,although its critical reputation has fallen.

Death in the Andes (1993,Trans. 1996): Lituma en los Andes would have counted as a minor novel had it not been for its indispensability in looking at Peru’s double-decade of the Senderista war. The Lituma of the Spanish title is a corporal who’s sent to the ancient mountains to help the impoverished locals,descendants of the Incas and the true heirs to Machu Picchu,defend themselves against the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist guerillas. As he begins to understand Senderista’s motives,Lituma is horrified by how primitive and intrinsic violence is to the landscape,how ancient the brutality of life itself is. The genesis of this novel lay in Llosa’s own participation in the investigation into the 1983 massacre of eight journalists in Uchuraccay. A recent novel inspired by Death is Peruvian Santiago Roncagliolo’s Red April.

The Feast of the Goat (2000,Trans. 2002): A late masterpiece,La fiesta del chivo is set in the Dominican Republic,moving back and forth along the country’s historical timeline,re-creating the long reign of dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina with two narratives. One is of Urania Cabral,daughter of a former Trujillista and minister,raped at the age of 14 by Trujillo as condition for her father’s return to the tyrant’s favour. She returns to her native land as an adult,long after the regime’s fall. The other storyline is that of Trujillo’s would-be assassins,now national heroes in the Dominican Republic. While Urania is fictional,most of the assassins are not. This novel too combines realism with Llosa’s interpretation of Latin American history and his examination of human resilience. This is distinctly a “dictator novel”,and one of its several legacies is Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes.