Writer Mario Vargas Llosa joins French Academy

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2010 between under the dome despite his age. His candidacy had been retained by immortals while since 2010, you have to have less than 75 years to introduce this election.

Le Monde with AFP

Nobel price of literature and now immortal. The writer Peruviano-Spanish Mario Vargas Llosa was elected, Thursday, November 25, at the French Academy in Michel Serres chair (18 e armchair), despite a higher age than the statutes, at 85 years old.

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2010 obtained in the first round 18 votes, against one for the director Frédéric Vignale, a white and two draws, said the academy in a News Release

His candidacy had been retained by immortals while since 2010, you have to have less than 75 years to come up with this election. On the other hand, there is no rule as to nationality. Mario Vargas Llosa has never published in French, even if he speaks fluently, for immigrating to Paris in 1959. He lives today in Madrid.

His work translated into French, mainly to Gallimard editions, is abundant, from the city and the dogs in 1966, until Wild weather in 2021. He was the first foreign writer to enter his lifetime in the prestigious collection. of Pléiade, in 2016.

First steps in writing as a reporter

Born in Arequipa, in southern Peru, on March 28, 1936, this child of the middle class, after a passage to the military academy of Lima, intends for literary studies, in Lima then Madrid, and in journalism .

His writer talent will make him one of the figures of revelation in the world of Latin American literature in the 1960s, alongside Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, from Argentin Julio Cortázar or Mexicans Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo.

He also had a political career, with an application for the Presidency of Peru in 1990. There was controversial liberal opinions.

The French Academy had not welcomed Nobel winner from François Mauriac, elected in 1933, recipient of the Swedish Prize in 1952, and died in 1970. Of the 40 seats of the institution designed as the guardian of the French language, five remain vacant, and the other 35 are occupied by 29 men and six women.

/Media reports.