Over four lectures, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa offers a fascinating testimonial about his own creative process. The lecture series will focus on four novels: The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros) (1962), Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversacíon en La Catedral) (1969), The War of the End of the World (La guerra del fin del mundo) (1981), and The Feast of the Goat (La fiesta del Chivo) (2000).

These four novels point to the diversity of themes covered by Vargas Llosa over his career, the different styles and techniques he has employed as a writer, and the social, political, and cultural issues that serve as the primary material for the novels. These works also provide an opportunity to discuss the problems of dictatorship and dictators who have characterized a good part of the history of Latin America, the cultural and ideological relationships between Latin America and Europe, the function of culture in civic and social life, the literary influences of Flaubert, Sartre, Faulkner, and Joyce in Vargas Llosa’s writing, and the participation of intellectuals and writers in Latin American political life.

Join the International House Global Voices Lecture Series in partnership with the University of Chicago Division of the Humanities as we welcome Mario Vargas Llosa for his first lecture in the Berlin Family Lecture Series on Monday, April 24 in the International House Assembly Hall.

Free and open to the public with registration.

Sponsored by the Global Voices Lecture Series and the University of Chicago Division of the Humanities.