![]() His latest book, The Call of the Tribe (first published in Spanish in 2018 as La llamada de la tribu and translated into English this year), offers a sort of intellectual autobiography. Not “liberalism” as the word is used in American politics-to designate someone left of center-but the broader outlook that champions representative democracy, free markets, limited government, and the protection of individual rights and constitutional procedures. Unfortunately, he lost to Alberto Fujimori, who defeated the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas but went on to dissolve Congress, suspend the constitution, and purge the judiciary.įor at least the past 40 years, Vargas Llosa has been a compelling spokesman for liberalism. ![]() ![]() ![]() He even ran for president of his native Peru in 1990. While others have cozied up to authoritarians of various stripes, Vargas Llosa has been a staunch defender of liberal democracy. He is also, arguably, the most politically important novelist of the last half century. He has received all the honors to prove it: a Nobel Prize in literature, a Miguel de Cervantes Prize (the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary award), and election to the Académie Française. Now 86, Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the world’s greatest living novelists. ![]() The Call of the Tribe, by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by John King (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 276 pp., $28) ![]()
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