A notepad is often an author’s most important tool. This one originally belonged to Mario Vargas Llosa. It was given to him by El País, Spain’s largest newspaper, to which Vargas Llosa sometimes contributes. Vargas Llosa often takes part in discourse on current issues. He wrote about world events that took place in 2004 in this notepad. Apart from writing, he has also been politically active, running for president in his native Peru in 1990.
Mario Vargas Llosa donated the notepad to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2010.
Mario Vargas Llosa has a large collection of hippopotami at home. They even occur in his literary works, as in the play Kathie and the Hippopotamus. Vargas Llosa took a particular liking to a story about a baby hippopotamus that lost its mother when the tsunami hit Kenya in 2004. The baby hippopotamus began searching for a new mother and made an unexpected choice – a 100-year-old tortoise! The tortoise took care of the baby hippo and, when the hippo was fully-grown, it cared for the aged tortoise. Vargas Llosa suggests we should be more like the hippo and the tortoise.
Mario Vargas Llosa donated the hippopotamus to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2010.
