At 86 years old, Mario Vargas Llosa (Lima, 1936) faces a new stage in his life. He has returned to his apartment in the center of Madrid, after ending his relationship with Isabel Preysler, and is finishing, surrounded by his collection of hippos, a novel about Peruvian music that will be released in the fall. These days are being frantic with the preparations for his admission, on February 9, to the Académie Française, the house of The Immortals, founded in 1633. His incorporation culminates an intense relationship with France, which defined his literary vocation, gave him the first recognitions and nurtured him intellectually, as detailed in his imminent book ‘A Barbarian in Paris’. The writer is happy. He exudes energy and peppers the talk with hearty laughter.

Alfaguara. 288 pages. €19.90. Ebook: 9.99 euros. On sale February 23. You can buy it here.

I decided to be a writer in France. Flaubert confirmed to me that literature was a way of life

Reading Sartre defended me from the sectarianism of the Communist Party, in which I was a member for a year in Peru

Socialism is dead. Nobody can believe in him after Cuba

Alfaguara. 504 pages. 18.91 euros. Ebook: 6.17 euros. You can buy it here.

After the success of La ciudad y los perros in France, Vargas Llosa sent the book to Carlos Barral. Two months later, the writer and the Catalan publisher met in Paris. “He told me that he had liked my novel very much and wanted to publish it in Spain.” Then began the procedures with the censorship, which lasted a year. And Barral invited Vargas Llosa to have lunch with the man in charge, Manuel Fraga’s brother-in-law.

Q. And how was it?

R. Well, there was a historian there about Latin America who did not understand anything, because he had not read the novel and asked: ‘But what happens? What happens?’. And then the head of censorship says: ‘What’s going on? The cadets throw a chicken at each other!’ [imitates the traditional accent] Ha, ha, ha. The guy was shocked.

Q. Here we are more than sheep.

A. Ha ha ha. It was wonderful. The head of censorship tells me: ‘Look. There is only one colonel in his novel. The colonel is the head of the barracks. So, either you put more colonels on him or that colonel cannot be ridiculed as he appears in his book. Those arguments gave me! And then I would say ‘I don’t agree with that’. In the end the novel came out with seven changes.

Q. I thought that with seven colonels!

R. And also the detail of the priest who went to the brothel. The head of censorship told me: ‘Look, I know that priests are not always respectful, but there is only one priest in his novel and that priest goes to brothels, so he can’t be. Get more priests or we’ll take out the brothel’. In the second edition, Carlos Barral cast the restored novel. It was a frightful struggle for Carlos with each book a little daring. Well, 20 or 30 years later, I’m giving a conference and a little old man appears… The head of censorship! who tells me that he has published a book and adds: ‘In that book I say that thanks to me The City and the Dogs was published here’! LOL. How nice, right?

The ‘messages’ in the story ‘The Winds’ are absurd. It would never have occurred to me to ridicule Isabel

The covid was terrible. The lack of oxygen is the worst thing that has happened to me. I had the impression that I was dying

Mario Vargas Llosa will occupy seat 18 of the Académie, vacant after the death of the philosopher Michel Serres. Without a doubt, a wink of fate. The first holder, between 1634 and 1650, was Jean Baudoin, translator into French of The Royal Commentaries of the Incas, by the Peruvian Inca Garcilaso, published in France in 1633. Among the 16 occupants, in addition, there have been archaeologists, writers, politicians, diplomats and marshals (among them, the heroic Foch and the collaborationist Pétain, who entered in 1929 and was removed in 1945). Also a bishop and a cardinal, allegedly poisoned by the revolutionaries. And two well-known liberals: Alexis de Tocqueville and Henri Lacordaire, a friar and lawyer of the Enlightenment, a supporter of the Church-State separation. And a colorful character like Honoré de Villars, aristocrat and philanthropist, governor of Provence, whom Casanova knew as an old man with rouge cheeks, crimson lips, and teeth as false as his hair. “I am told that in her youth she loved women, but that in her old age she had taken the modest step of becoming the wife of three or four favorites in her service,” he wrote. A very diverse cast

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