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Thoughts on Vargas Llosa’s Win
I first became aware of Margio Vargas Llosa and his work in the 1990s when I heard him speak at the Miami Book Fair International. He was always a hit with Cuban Miami (anyone who is an enemy of Fidel….), but political issues aside, what drew me (and many readers) to his work is the authenticity and power of his fiction. Today the Swedish Academy said that it is honoring Vargas Llosa for outlining the “structures of power” and for “his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” The Academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, called him “a divinely gifted storyteller” whose writing touches the reader. I agree on…
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Encounters on the Miraflores Malecon
Lola had an eventful morning. El Fotografo and I took her for a long stroll along the Malecón in Miraflores, overlooking the ocean, and in the course of one and a half hours she met: her longlost mother her longlost father author Mario Vargas Llosa. We had been walking for an hour when we ran into Pepa. The eerie thing about Lola’s mother is she looks exactly like Lola — a slim, low-slung black European Lab with a delicately shaped head. EF has spotted Pepa several times by the Malecón lighthouse in the last year, but this was my first time meeting maman since we adopted Lola in late 2007. Pepa was carrying a tennis ball…