Mario Vargas Llosa explains why his politics changed

IT IS not every novelist who sits down to write a serious work of political philosophy. But Mario Vargas Llosa has always been as much a political as a literary animal. He describes “La Llamada de la Tribu” (“The Call of the Tribe”), published in February as its author turned 82, as an account of his own intellectual history. That is a journey from youthful flirtation with communism and existentialism; enthusiasm for and then disenchantment with the Cuban revolution; followed by a conversion to liberalism in the British sense. This stance makes him exceptional among Latin American intellectuals, many of whom are still bewitched by anti-imperialism and socialism.

The book is an account of the lives and thought of seven liberal philosophers. Apart from Adam Smith, they include Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin, both of whom the author met (as he did Margaret Thatcher, who impressed him too) while living in London in the 1970s. Also on the list are France’s Raymond Aron and José Ortega y Gasset of...Continue reading

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