On Thursday, February 9, 2023, Inter-American Dialogue member and prolific, award-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa was inducted into the Académie Française. He was the first author to be inducted into the Académie who had never published a book in the French language. Vargas Llosa has been recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature and is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

Quoted in El País, Vargas Llosa said, “The novel will save democracy or it will be buried with it and disappear. Nothing has been invented so far quite like the novel to keep alive the dream of a better society than this one in which we live, in which everyone would find enough materials for their happiness, a word that seems unreal madness in these times but which fed for centuries the longing of millions of human beings.”

Mario Vargas Llosa is a member of the Inter-American Dialogue.