Mainstream WeeklyLE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE, November 2010
Last October 7, the Swedish Academy announced that it was awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 to the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. This exquisite novelist was long on the list of "Nobelizables". But his constant militant commitment to ultraliberal ideology had ruled him out until today. Indeed, by the will of Alfred Nobel, not only the literary work of the award-winning author must have "brought eminent services to humanity" but the writer himself, to deserve the award, must also have "demonstrated his affection for a great ideal". The Peruvian novelist still hasn’t fulfilled this second aspect. And it is particularly surprising that he was awarded the prize exactly the year in which the writer justified the coup in Honduras.
by Ignacio Ramonet, November 2010
The new novel by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature of 2010 [1], is on sale timely in the bookstores of Spanish-speaking countries on November 3rd. Title: The Celtic Dream. Your hero: Roger Casement, an exceptional (real) character. British Consul in Africa, was the first to denounce, in 1908, the atrocities of extermination colonialism (ten million dead) practiced in the Congo by Leopold II, the king who made that immense country and its inhabitants his personal property... In another report, Casement denounced the abominable misfortune of Indians in the Peruvian Amazon. A pioneer in human rights defense, Casement, born near Dublin, later joined the ranks of Irish independence supporters. In the midst of the Great War, starting from the principle that "Britain’s difficulties are an opportunity for Ireland," he sought an alliance with Germany to fight the British. He was prosecuted for high treason. Authorities also accused him of "homosexual practices" based on a alleged personal diary whose authenticity is questioned. He died by hanging himself on August 3, 1916.
Since the novel is not available yet, we ignore how Vargas Llosa has built his architecture. But we can trust him. No other Spanish-language novelist possesses like him the art of bewitching the reader, of embellishing them from the first lines and of plunging them into thrilling plots where intrigues full of passions, humor, cruelty and eroticism happen.
In any case, this novel already has a merit: that of, precisely, to remove Roger Casement, "one of the first Europeans who had a very clear idea of the nature of colonialism and its atrocities" [2]. Idea that the Peruvian writer (despite declaring himself hostile to indigenous movements in Latin America) says to share: "No barbarity is comparable to colonialism