Mario Vargas Llosa by Gerald Martin review – the passions and politics of Peru’s Nobel laureate

This stylish biography of the author traces his journey from left to right, and from ‘posh Lima’ to Cricklewood “At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?” Those words on the opening page of Conversation in the Cathedral announced the arrival of a writer who understood that national history could become the organising principle of fiction. At precisely the moment when Latin America was discovering the intoxicating possibilities of magical realism – a form whose exuberance had an elect...

By Pratinav Anil