Vargas Llosa continued to write during his hospitalization for covid

• Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa attends the presentation of the agreement between the C&; Tedra Vargas Llosa and Fundación El Libro during the 46th Buenos Aires International Book Fair, in Buenos Aires, on May 6, 2022. Luis ROBAYO/AFP

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The Hispanic-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, 86, followed writing even during his hospitalization for complications from covid-19 two weeks ago in Madrid, he revealed the author himself this Sunday at the Buenos Aires Book Fair.

“I have never stopped writing articles, not even in the most difficult situations”, said Vargas Llosa, Nobel prize for literature 2010,commenting on his most recent publication in the press, a review entitled “Cervantes”, on the book by Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language.

“I worked on that article. A lot, because we were going to make a presentation at the Academy. I finally wrote it down. in the clinic, since there was no presentation”, he said. the author of “The city and the dogs”, “The green house”, “Conversation in the cathedral” and “La fiesta del chivo”, among dozens of novels, plays and essays.

In a talk with the Argentine Jorge Fernández Díaz, Vargas Llosa explained the that he had to be hospitalized because as a result of covid-19 he lost & oacute; breath.

“It was an experience of only 24 hours, but very distressing. I remember how liberating it was when they put the oxygen on me,” he said.

Vargas Llosa has been in Buenos Aires since last Thursday. On Friday he launched at the Book Fair a story contest and this Sunday His most recent book “The quiet gaze”, about the Spanish writer Benito Pérez Galdós. 

He attended a Fundación Libertad dinner in the city of Rosario, along with former right-wing president Mauricio Macri (2015-19) and other political leaders of the Argentine opposition.

To write this latest book, Vargas Llosa he dedicated himself for 18 months, in the midst of the pandemic, to read all of Pérez Galdós’s work, according to what he said. himself.

“He was probably the first professional writer to appear on the scene. in Spain and in Latin America. He compromised & gué; to write a novel every three months  and it didn’t always work out. well” Vargas Llosa on the author of “Fortunata and Jacinta”.

Finally, on his own work, Vargas Llosa asserted & oacute; that “I am always writing novels. Sometimes they don’t come out and I keep them. But I never stop writing novels”.

Vargas Llosa is the last living representative of the Latin American boom, in which the Colombian Gabriel García Má ;rquez, the Argentine Julio Cortázar and the Mexican Carlos Fuentes. Last year he was elected a member of the French Academy of Language.