Vargas Llosa to receive honorary doctorate

At a reception on June 23, award-winning Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa spoke about his career as a novelist and the tribulations involved in practicing the art.

The ceremony at the University of Granada in Spain was to celebrate the honorary doctorate the university bestowed on him today, June 24.

In his address he spoke of his two-year stay at Leoncio Prado Military School, and said it was there that he discovered “the truth” about his country: “the violence, the hurt, the bitterness and racism that so distanced Peruvians from each other.”

“My dad sent me to military school because he saw I had a literary vocation and thought the military could cure me of that sickness, but what he did was give me the subject for my first novel, ‘La Ciudad y los Perros’ (The Time of the Hero)”, he said.

Vargas Llosa, also honored with the Prince of Asturias for Literature and the Planeta, among other awards, believes that “this vocation should be a prize in itself for a writer who really loves literature, who wants to write not to be successful but to live according to his deepest desire.”