One of the great exponents of the golden age of Latin American literature left in his stories numerous references to the city that inspired his adventures. With a wink to Lima, the city that welcomed him since the age of 10, the writer set many of his texts in the scenarios of the Peruvian capital, where he transformed his experiences into literature and his memory into narrative.
For decades, Mario Vargas Llosa He placed in Lima scenarios key fragments of his novels, with the purpose of placing Peru in the international literary radar. Lima ceased to be just a stage to become the protagonist. Although he was not born in the capital, the author always sought to highlight the city that, from his childhood, showed unique and formative adventures.
One of the most outstanding examples is The city and dogs (1963), novel set at the Leoncio Prado Military College, in the coastal district of La Perla. In this work, Vargas Llosa portrays machismo and brutality in military internships, as an incisive social criticism.
The adventures of the poet Alberto travel emblematic spaces of Lima, such as the Pavilion of the Military College and the Miraflores neighborhood, where it is also linked to the tragic story of Cuéllar, in The puppies (1967).
Another work in which Miraflores and the Lima coast are protagonists is Sundayincluded in the book The bosses (1959), where the Costa Verde is mentioned, reaffirming the prominence of the urban and coastal landscape.
In The city and dogsthe story of Alberto and Teresa also takes place in the district of Lince. There, the young man falls in love with Teresa, even knowing that she is the great love of the Jaguar, another of the characters in her novels.
From his first novel, Lima appears in his works
In The city and dogshis first novel, the author made Lima more than a scenario: he transformed it into the protagonist.
In that narrative debut, he already introduces the reader into a sordid incursion by the missing neighborhood of Huatica, in La Victoria, where characters such as the mythical “golden feet” inhabited.
But it is in Conversation in the cathedral (1969) where the Peruvian capital reaches its most intense expression. There, Santiago Zavala observes the city “without love” from the newspaper of the newspaper The chronicle And he launches one of the most emblematic questions of Peruvian literature: “At what time had Peru screwed?”
That disenchanted lime, of bars such as the cathedral – yy in ruins – and emblematic places such as the house of San Marcos, reveals a country broken from the intimate to the political.
The city continues to reappear in works such as Aunt Julia and the writer (1977), Mayta’s story (1984), The Don Rigoberto Notebooks (1997), Paradise in the other corner (2003), Mala girl’s vunos (2006) and Five corners (2016). From Miraflores and Barranco to the Altos neighborhoods, each street and neighborhood portrayed serves to reveal social conflicts, human passions and political tensions.
Vargas Llosa closed his novelistic career at age 87 with I dedicate my silence (2023), a story marked by the love of Creole music and a lime that inhabits the memory and soul of his work. Through his novels, the Nobel gave the city a place in universal literature, immortalizing his contrasts, wounds and beauty.