Writer Mario Vargas Llosa admitted to Madrid due to covid-19 | Culture

Hispanic Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, 87, is hospitalized in a Madrid hospital for covid, as confirmed by his family on the social network Twitter on Tuesday. Family sources have indicated that the writer is stable.

“Given the media interest in our father’s health, we are making it public that he has been hospitalized since Saturday after being diagnosed with covid-19. He is cared for by excellent professionals and accompanied by his family. We ask the media to respect their privacy and ours at this time.” read in the story of his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa in a statement also signed by his other children, Gonzalo and Morgana.

The Nobel laureate had already been hospitalized for the same cause in April 2022, which prevented him from attending the book presentation cervantes (Criticism) of the director of the Royal Academy of Language, Santiago Muñoz Machado, in a crisis that he soon overcame at the Ruber clinic in Madrid. The pneumonia caused by the virus had subsided.

In recent months, the writer’s activity has not ceased. Last April he received the Grand Collar of the Order of the Sun in Lima, the capital of his native country. He also participated, in the same month, in a cycle dedicated to his work at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid. In February, he entered the French Academy, the institution founded four centuries ago by Cardinal Richelieu, in an act in the presence of King Juan Carlos I and the Infanta Cristina de Borbón. “I have secretly aspired to be a French writer,” he said at the start of his speech. Precisely, his latest release so far is A Barbarian in Paris: Texts on French Culture (Alfaguara), a collection of articles on his relations with France.