Installed in Peru and again with his wife Patricia, Mario Vargas Llosa gave an interview a few months ago to the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio where he revealed that his new novel was almost ready, that the plot was about “the Peruvian waltz” and that it would lead the title of ¿A little brother champagne?, “like his popular article on the hauchaferia of 1983, which raised a certain amount of dust in Lima society”.
The Alfaguara publishing house has sent a press release today to announce that the new Nobel Prize novel is ready and that it will go on sale on October 26. The statement has caused some controversy, because Vargas Llosa has decided to change the initial title. The book is no longer called A little brother champagne? but I dedicate my silence. Is this change a hint from the writer to Isabel Preysler with whom he broke up earlier in the year?
At the moment, there is no answer to that question, but it is known that I dedicate my silence to you maintains that “waltz, born in the alleys of Lima, which integrated Peru” as its protagonist. “Here I tell that story, and with it I thank a secret love that has accompanied me all my life: the one I feel for Creole music and, especially, for the waltz of my country,” says the writer about the content of his new construction site.
I dedicate my silence to you tells the story of “Toño Azpilcueta, an expert in Creole music, who discovers a virtuous guitarist, Lalo Molfino, whose talent seems to confirm all his intuitions: the deep love he feels for Peruvian waltzes, sailors, polkas and huaynos has a social justification”, has advanced the editorial.
The novel takes place in the early 1990s, when Peru was suffering from Shining Path terrorism and the protagonist dreams of “a country united by music”, for which he “decides to investigate more about Lalo, travel to his place of origin, meet this an elusive character, learning about his history, his family and love, how he became such an excellent musician, and he also intends to write a book in which to tell the story of criolla music and develop that idea that he has inoculated in his mind. the discovery of this extraordinary musician”.
Vargas Llosa has also maintained in his new work the idea of ??the hauchaferia, which the dictionary defines as something “cheesy said or done” and that has no translation outside of Peru. For the journalist from El impartial Carlos Ramírez, the hauchaferia is “a special Peruvian characterization of social behavior that is very complex to understand, a kind of cultural subclass, but it could well be something similar to Octavio Paz’s search for the Mexican (El laberinto de la solitude, 1950) in the pachuco or autonomous social class placed between the poor class and the rich class, always in an attitude of rebellion”.
