Noble Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa

In May, 2009, at the New York press conference for the announcement of the Man Booker International Prize shortlist (I chaired the jury), I remarked that I considered Mario Vargas Llosa's 1981 novel "The War of the End of the World" "the book 'War and Peace' wanted to be." I was half joking of course (as always), but I did hope that somehow this line would land as a blurb on all future publications of "The War of The End of the World," because it was a novel that I had found to be so humane, so beautifully written, so wise, and so compelling that I thought it should take its place among the best of the best. Maybe now that Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel Prize, it will.

The amazing thing about "The War of the End of the World" is that it looks at religious cults and end-of-the-world figures in such an insightful way that the reader comes from the novel feeling as though the last word has been said about this subject. Perhaps the greatest pleasure of the novel is that men and women of all types -- soldiers, criminals, landowners, housewives, beggars, intellectuals, priests, believers -- and all social classes are viewed with compassion and interest. No character is dismissed or overlooked, and the result is a tragic celebration of a very human thing, the sweep of an avid belief through a society, and the change and damage it leaves behind. Is the Savior figure in this novel meant to represent Jesus? Or Jim Jones? Vargas Llosa isn't saying, and that makes it all the better.

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