Vargas Llosa: ‘I have no regrets’

Mario Vargas Llosa, pictured on January 24 at his home in Madrid.GIANFRANCO TRIPODO

Mario Vargas Llosa: ‘I have no regrets’

The Spanish-Peruvian author and Nobel laureate spoke with EL PAÍS at his home in Madrid ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française

MANUEL JABOIS

Madrid - FEB 20, 2023 - 13:34 COT

The Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize, welcomed me into his Madrid home ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française. The apartment is a place of enormous spaces, full of light and books. Seven years ago, the acclaimed author abandoned this famous refuge on Flora Street, in the heart of the Spanish capital, to move to an even more famous home in Madrid: a luxury residence in the exclusive area known as Puerta de Hierro, property of the businesswoman and socialite Isabel Preysler, with whom Vargas Llosa was romantically involved until their recent separation. “We had an experience, and it’s over. Now I’m back at home, surrounded by my books,” Vargas Llosa said partway through our interview, laughing as if he were Odysseus returning to Ithaca. “I have no regrets, absolutely none.”

 

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, at a Kansas City club in 1978.ALLAN TANNENBAUM (POLARIS/CONTACTOPHOTO)

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: ‘If you don’t come, I’ll be with a guy’

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Manuel Jabois

Sanxenxo, 14 August 2024

On July 3, 1967, 20-year-old Patricia Lee Smith arrived in New York wearing dungarees, a black turtleneck, an old gray trench coat, and a small red-and-yellow checked suitcase containing several notebooks, drawing pencils, and a copy of Rimbaud’s Illuminations, which was changing her already upturned life: pregnant at 19, she had put her baby up for adoption. Months later, in New York, she went to the address she had been given and there, in a room, she found a guy sleeping on an iron bed. “He was pale and slim with masses of dark curls, lying bare-chested with strands of beads around his neck […] He rose in one motion, put on his huaraches and a white T-shirt, and beckoned me to follow him […] I had never seen anyone like him,” she wrote 43 years later. The young man helped her to her room, and they said goodbye.

 

Mario Vargas Llosa: ‘I have no regrets’

The Spanish-Peruvian author and Nobel laureate spoke with EL PAÍS at his home in Madrid ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française

Manuel Jabois
Madrid, February 20, 2023

The Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize, welcomed me into his Madrid home ahead of his induction into the prestigious Académie Française. The apartment is a place of enormous spaces, full of light and books. Seven years ago, the acclaimed author abandoned this famous refuge on Flora Street, in the heart of the Spanish capital, to move to an even more famous home in Madrid: a luxury residence in the exclusive area known as Puerta de Hierro, property of the businesswoman and socialite Isabel Preysler, with whom Vargas Llosa was romantically involved until their recent separation. “We had an experience, and it’s over. Now I’m back at home, surrounde by mybooks,” Vargas L,laughing as if “I none.”