HN Reader

One of my favorite authors and one of the best novelists of all times. I am grateful he existed and that he wrote so much amazing books. I am sad that he's gone.

May he rest in peace!

Recent article on him in the London Review of Books, exploring his rightward turn as he grew older:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/tony-wood/why-did-he...

For folks reading in Spanish here, what is his most accessible work? (I am a ~B2 in Spanish and have wanted to read a novel of his for a while.)

Probably my favorite author of fiction. The feast of the goat (la fiesta del chivo) is at the top of my list if you have not read him.

I can recommend his Los cachorros (The Cubs).

The War of the End of the World, unfortunately the only book I read, but it left a lasting impression.

Rest in peace.

muy triste :(

The War of The End of The World is one of the best books I’ve ever read:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_End_of_the_Wo...

“Four, said the Jaguar”

Read him while learning Spanish. Conversación en la Catedral is very saddening, but left long lasting impressions and made me a hint to read on history of South America.

He once punched Gabriel García Márquez. I remember learning about this while reading Vargas Llosa as an adolescent, still sounds hard to believe: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/03/06/when-mario-va...

Conversation in the Cathedral absolutely blew my mind when I first read it. Honestly, just the first section would have made a great book all on its own.

I realized last night that I’ve never read anything by him in translation (there was one book in English—A Writer’s Reality—which was in English, but that book was based on lectures given in English and there is no Spanish original. As my ex-wife often says, “No good reason to read the translation if you can read the original.” La Fiesta de la Chivo influenced the form of the novel I’m currently querying (which, despite having had three excerpts published as short stories, appears destined to be yet another trunked work). The biggest challenge I found reading Vargas Llosa is that section and chapter breaks tend to be infrequent giving fewer opportunities to pause while reading.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/books/review/mario-vargas...