THE NEW NOVEL BY NOBEL PRIZE WINNER MARIO VARGAS LLOSA The story of a man who dreamed of a country united by music and went crazy wanting to write a perfect book to tell it Toño Azpilcueta spends his days between his job at a school, his family and ...
THE NEW NOVEL BY NOBEL PRIZE WINNER MARIO VARGAS LLOSA The story of a man who dreamed of a country united by music and went crazy wanting to write a perfect book to tell it Toño Azpilcueta spends his days between his job at a school, his family and his great passion, Creole music, which he has been researching since his youth. One day, a call changes his life. An invitation to go and listen to an unknown guitarist, Lalo Molfino, a character that nobody knows much about but who is extremely talented, seems to confirm all his feelings. The deep love he feels for Peruvian waltzes, marineras, polkas, and huainos has a reason beyond the pleasure of listening to them (or dancing to them). Perhaps what is happening is that Creole music is, in reality, not only a symbol of identity for an entire country and an expression of that very Peruvian attitude of huachafería ("Peru's greatest contribution to universal culture," according to Toño Azpilcueta), but something much more, an element capable of provoking a social revolution, of breaking down prejudices and racial barriers to unite the entire country in a fraternal and mestizo embrace. In a country fractured and devastated by the violence of Sendero Luminoso, music could be that which reminds all those who make up society that, above all else, they are brothers and compatriots. And in this, the virtuosity of Lalo Molfino's guitar may haves a lot to do with it. Toño Azpilcueta decides to investigate more about Molfino, to travel to his place of origin, to meet this elusive character, to learn about his history, his family and loves,a nd about how he became such an excellent guitarist. He also intends to write a book to tell the story of Creole music and develop the idea that the discovery of this extraordinary musician has instilled in his mind. Fiction and essay are thus masterfully intertwined in this novel in which the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner returns to a theme that has obsessed him for years: utopias. That is what Toño Azpilcueta ultimately pursues: the utopia of generating, through art, an idea of a country. Critics have
«Mario Vargas Llosa's writing has shaped our image of South America and has its chapter in the history of contemporary literature. In his early years, he was a renovator of the novel; today, an epic poet».
Per Wastberg, President of the Nobel Committee «Welcome [...] the great recreator of the realist novel, whom we read with the same enthusiasm with which others read the imaginative excesses - they are also welcome - of magical realism».
J. A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia «His books contain the most complex, passionate, and persuasive vision of the novel and the novelist's craft that I have heard of; they also contain the best stimulus that a novelist can find to write, a stimulus second only to that contained in Vargas Llosa's novels».
Javier Cercas, El País
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