Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa back in hospital with Covid

Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has again been hospitalised over complications linked to Covid-19, the second time since first contracting the virus last year, his family said Monday.

“He has been hospitalised since Saturday, after being declared positive for Covid-19,” his children Alvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana said in a statement.

It did not say where the Spanish-Peruvian writer, who lives in Madrid, was being treated.

The 87-year-old had already recovered from Covid in April 2022.

Born in Peru in 1936, Vargas Llosa, a last survivor of a golden generation of Latin American literary giants, took Spanish citizenship in 1993.

Madrid newspaper El Pais, which publishes a weekly column by the writer, reported that he was being treated at a capital hospital and was in “stable” condition, citing family sources.

“He is being treated by excellent professionals and surrounded by his family,” his children said in the statement.

Admired for his depiction of social realities, but criticised within Latin American intellectual circles for his conservative positions, Vargas Llosa is a leading light of the “boom” generation that included greats such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar.