Vargas Llosa back in Peru, tired and eager to work

Author Mario Vargas Llosa, back in Peru on Monday after receiving the Nobel Literature Prize in Stockholm on Friday, said he felt tired but “extremely eager” to resume his literary work.

“I’m very happy to be back in Peru, although I must confess I feel very tired. These weeks have been very hectic,” he told reporters at Lima’s international airport.

The Nobel Prize he received in Sweden, he said “is an honour to the language the novelist writes in and his country.”

The prize “has given me many new friends; that’s very moving and perhaps it will improve my concept of the human being,” he said, adding: “surely it has also made me a few enemies”.

Standing alongside Culture Minister Juan Ossio, Llosa, 74, said his immediate concern was getting back to writing.

“I’m extremely eager to plunge into my literary work I’ve interrupted since October 7,” he said.

Today, Mr Llosa will receive numerous state tributes, including the Arts and Letters Award President Alan Garcia will bestow on him at the government palace, followed by a gala dinner.

Before the award ceremony, Mr Llosa will open at Lima’s House of Literature the International Congress of Literature: Cartography of Power In The Works Of Vargas Llosa.

He will also hold a press conference at the National Museum of Arts and take part in a discussion on his latest novel El Sueno del Celta (The Dream of the Celt).

Mr Llosa said after all the ceremonies he plans to travel to his home town of Arequipa, where still more tributes await him.