Peru's Vargas Llosa plans new novel

Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa is planning a new novel based in the Peruvian city of Piura that evokes changes in the country and includes some autobiographical elements. "It takes place between Piura and Lima. I'm not inventing 100 percent of the story, but it's not a completely autobiographical novel either," Vargas Llosa said Thursday in Santiago during an event celebrating Chilean writer Jorge Edwards. "I am going off images in my memory; that's the starting point," he was quoted as saying in Chilean media. The 2010 Nobel laureate recently revealed that part of the novel tentatively entitled "El heroe discreto" ("The Discreet Hero") would "concern the fast pace of change gladly sweeping through Peru," a reference to an economic boom and social change in the writer's native country. "I have followed Piura's evolution rather closely. I feel more comfortable imagining stories, characters, situations in a city like Piura than in others that I know less," he told Lima's El Comercio newspaper. Vargas Llosa spent several of his childhood years in Piura, a northern Peruvian city with a warm climate near the sea. But before the novel comes out, an essay on the frivolousness of certain aspects of contemporary culture is due out in Spain next month. The writer, 75 splits his time between Spain and Peru, and often appears as a guest at various events across Latin America.