People in Madrid, Spain pay tribute to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Photo: VCG
"It felt like a light had been turned off in my heart" is how 43-year-old Chinese reader Zhao Xiuying put it to the Global Times upon hearing about the death of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. On April 13, the Nobel-winning giant of Latin American literature passed away in Lima, Peru, at the age of 89. The news plunged fans worldwide into mourning - countless Chinese readers like Zhao are among them.
Vargas Llosa appears to have led a multi-persona life. He wrote plays, worked as a bank clerk, and even ran for president of Peru in 1990. Yet amid his bustling life, the writer also turned his gaze toward Chinese readers. He visited China in 2011, a year after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. The writer even wrote a special letter to Chinese readers, in which he noted that "literature is a universal language."
Connection to China
Looking back, it was the summer of 2011. Zhao, a Chinese fan of the writer, happened to learn from a friend at a publishing house that Vargas Llosa would be visiting China for about a week. Though Zhao couldn't find exact details about his trip, the Nobel laureate did indeed arrive. He gave speeches at Shanghai International Studies University and the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and even held a reading session of his own works.
These events drew large crowds of students, fellow writers, fans, and journalists. The overwhelming enthusiasm moved Vargas Llosa deeply. Though unable to respond to everyone individually, he still made a heartfelt connection with Chinese readers through an open letter.
In the letter, he wrote that China, much like the "fantastical and unbelievable countries" he had encountered in adventure stories, was also a "real and immensely powerful" nation. He had never imagined that his own stories "could reach to such a far place."
Prior to his Chinese visit in 2011, the writer's works had actually already reached to China beginning in the late 1970s. At that time, a Chinese publication named Foreign Literature and Art published an article introducing Vargas Llosa's life and works.
Starting from the 1960s, the Latin American literary boom was already in full swing. Vargas Llosa as one of the phenomenon's centeral figures who had intrigued readers in China. This connection soon manifested in 1980 when his novel The Time of the Hero was published in Chinese. The translation was done by Zhao Deming, a renowned Spanish-language translator who coincidentally passed away just 10 days before Vargas Llosa's death, according to The Paper.
Though Zhao has passed away, the legacy of his Chinese translations of Vargas Llosa's literature lives on. Hou Jian, an associate professor of the Spanish Department at Xi'an International Studies University and a translator of Vargas Llosa's works, told the Global Times that he visited and interviewed Vargas Llosa at his Madrid residence in the year of 2019. The Peruvian writer told him he "wanted to learn about China" when Hou asked why he agreed to the meeting.
"Because no Chinese translator had ever visited my home before. I wanted to learn about China, including how my works are being translated and received there," said Vargas Llosa.
Hou told the Global Times that, by conversing with Vargas Llosa, he discovered that the writer had a deep interest in Chinese culture. Chinese elements frequently appear in his works, often portrayed as owners of grocery stores or similar roles. Hou said that Vargas Llosa once asked him if he knew the word "chifa." It is a term in Peruvian Spanish derived from Chinese specifically referring to Peruvian-style Chinese cuisine.
"This detail reflects Vargas Llosa's attentiveness to and familiarity with the cultural heritage of Chinese-Peruvians," Hou emphasised.
Icon of shared values
Unlike García Márquez's dreamlike blending of myth with mundane reality or Carlos Fuentes' literary mediation between Latin American and European traditions, Vargas Llosa is known as an "architect of literary structure."
His novels frequently unfold through multi-threaded narratives, but have always examined social realities. Conservation in the Cathedral, one of Vargas Llosa's favourite works, is an example. It threads several individual characters' life stories, and uses their encounters to reflect Peruvian social reality.
Describing him as a "global intellectual," Hou said that the writer scrutinized social changes in his native Peru, broader Latin America, Spain (whose citizenship he later adopted) and other nations.
The writer tackles morally charged taboos while remaining uncompromising in his pursuit of human dignity and justice. The universal values embedded in his literature works enabled them to resonate with readers of different cultures. In other words, his "literary journey epitomizes the cultural convergence of our globalized era," Hou told the Global Times.
"Including Llosa, the reason why these writers of the Latin American literary boom succeeded is because they neither focused solely on their own cultural framework nor abandoned their Latin American roots. Instead, they integrated both elements," Hou noted, adding that this is the reason why Vargas Llosa's works can still engage today's readers, especially young ones.
Young Chinese reader Tang Yi told the Global Times that after reading works like The Feast of the Goat, he noticed that, unlike writers who solely critique society, Vargas Llosa's characters always "carry a pursuit of hope within them."
In 1997, Vargas Llosa wrote the non-fiction book Letters to a Young Novelist, in which he shared with young readers a writing technique that he created and called "Caja China." It can be simply explained as a storytelling form in which a primary story brings up secondary or derivative narratives, and these different story lines interact with each other.
"Without curiosity toward the world, even such a technique would fall flat. Thus, rather than teaching us how to write, Vargas Llosa actually teaches us how a writer should think," said Tang.
