Llosa, the Nobel prize winner in 2010 tells how reading has expanded his imagination and enriched his life. He was not happy with the endings of stories he read as a boy and tried to give different endings. Literature helped him create a parallel world where adversity , chaos, ugliness, the present gave way to rich imagination, order, beauty and the eternal. He has learnt a lot from Flaubert, Dickens, Balzac, Tolstoy, Sartre and Malraux etc. To him, no literature means no critical spirit, the engine of progress. Writing and reading are protests against inadequacies of life. After a brief stint with Marxism, he turned away from the authoritarian streak of Cuban, Russian and Chinese revolutions towards reevaluation of democracy under the influence of thinkers like Raymond Aron , Karl Popper etc. He opposes nationalism and religion which hide racist or ethnic prejudice. Patriotism is a generous feeling that gives memories of places, peoples and warmth towards one’s culture. Literature has saved him from the edge of despair and story telling has been his means of treading on that road. He thinks that literature is a false representation of life that makes us understand life better, bearable and to be skeptical before topics like transcendence, individual and collective destiny, the soul, and the meaning of history. Fiction is a bulwark against savagery, mechanical modern life, lethargy and increase of violence and moderates our human condition.
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