Vargas Llosa Says He Never Thought He’d Find a Publisher

Vargas Llosa Says He Never Thought He’d Find a Publisher

Writer Mario Vargas Llosa, 1994 Cervantes Prize winner, said Tuesday that when he was starting out he “never” thought he would find an editor for his works and thought he would have to pay to have them published “like all the other Peruvian writers” of his time.

“I didn’t even dare to wish for it, it was something completely divorced from reality for a writer in my country,” the author of “Los Cachorros” (The Puppies) said.

The Peruvian novelist reviewed his life and literary career in a conference at the University of Granada, which will award him an honorary doctorate on Wednesday.

In his address he spoke of his two-year stay at Leoncio Prado Military School, and said it was there that he discovered “the truth” about his country: “the violence, the hurt, the bitterness and racism that so distanced Peruvians from each other.”

“My dad sent me to military school because he saw I had a literary vocation and thought the military could cure me of that sickness, but what he did was give me the subject for my first novel, ‘La Ciudad y los Perros’ (The Time of the Hero)”, he said.

Vargas Llosa, also honored with the Prince of Asturias for Literature and the Planeta, among other awards, believes that “this vocation should be a prize in itself for a writer who really loves literature, who wants to write not to be successful but to live according to his deepest desire.”
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