The fictions of Mario Vargas Llosa

Word to the reader

The vignettes that follow are not objective descriptions of the photos they accompany. They are fantasies, fictions, and inventions inspired in images taken by Pablo Corral during his travels through the Andes. They are not intended to provide exact information, but to recreate, with the help of imagination, the psychological, social, and cultural context that inspired the artist. In writing these word pictures I have worked with the same freedom I enjoy when I write a novel, interrelating the photographed reality with my own visions and allowing that alliance to merge into a new phenomenon. I would like to add that the world of the Andes is not alien to me. I was born in a city of the southern sierra of Perú famous for its volcanoes and earthquakes: Arequipa, where ancient houses and temples are constructed of the petrified lava called sillar. I spent my early years in Cochambamba, a city in the Bolivian sierra, and that landscape is the first recorded in my memory. And although I have lived most of my life on the coast, I have gone back to climb the Andes and breathe its pure air, and felt my blood stir on the heights. I have felt what the prodigal son feels when he returns home and through the gift of memory recognizes his native land and beloved peoples.

Mario Vargas Llosa

translated from the Spanish
by Margaret Sayers Peden