Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa to visit Georgia

Mario Vargas Llosa, an internationally recognised Peruvian author, journalist and professor and the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, will travel to Georgia later this year to learn about the local culture and arts.

The writer, who rose to literary recognition in the 1960s, will hold his first-ever visit to the South Caucasus in September, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia revealed at a media event on Thursday.

Travelling to Georgia for a five-day visit, Vargas Llosa will be hosted by the ministry and the Georgian National Book Centre.

See Vargas Llosa speak about French novelist Gustave Flaubert as his major influence at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm in 2014:

Now aged 82, the literary figure will have encounters with readers and students, while also meeting regional publishers and translators from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the ministry said.

Professionals of the local literary scene and of the wider cultural field will also prepare a programme introducing Georgian culture and history to the notable figure during his stay in the country.

Born in 1936, Vargas Llosa is among pioneering writers of the Latin American literature’s “Boom” period in the 1960s.

His 1963 novel The Time of the Hero heralded the writer’s contribution to the era and highlighted the author’s experiences at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in the early 1950s, after having been sent to the venue by his authoritarian father.

The subject of dominant authorities’ stifling of personal freedom has been one of major themes in works by Vargas Llosa, while he has also been influenced by injustices in treatment of natives of the Amazon jungle in the late 1950s.

Having visited their fate at the hands of colonists and missionaries during his visit of the region in 1958, Vargas Llosa was inspired to create works including The Green House (1966) and Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973).

Later in the 20th century the Peruvian essayist also entered politics during protests against Peru’s former president Alan García in 1987. Vargas Llosa led the Movimiento Libertad movement before founding the Frente Democrático party later on.

The author has written columns for the prominent Spanish newspaper El País since the 1990s, sharing his opinions on current worldwide social, political and cultural events.

He has also taught at universities in the United States, leading classes at Harvard and Princeton universities, among others.

Vargas Llosa was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for his “cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.”

He has also received a range of literary and public awards and honours in Latin America, Europe and beyond, including the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour, the Jerusalem Prize in Israel and the Commander of the Order of the Aztec Eagle in Mexico.