Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize winner and Enrique Iglesias’ possible future stepfather, will be releasing his next novel Cinco esquinas on March 3. According to Peru This Week, the novel will be set in 90s Peru, an unstable period of time that was marked by Alberto Fujimori’s decade in power. The book will follow people of different social classes, and how their lives were affected by rebel guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso, as well as how this era was covered by the media.
Though he’s obviously probably reinvigorated by his relationship with Isabel Presyler nowadays, Vargas was struggling with his new book earlier this year. Unlike La ciudad y los perros, which had three possible titles, he couldn’t think of what his new book should be called. He revisited his past in Cinco Esquinas, a neighborhood in Lima’s Barrios Altos zone, at a time when he was a young reporter living a more bohemian life, according to El País.
Since then, the area has changed. What once housed embassies for Japan, France, and the United states at the Quinta Heeren is now damaged beyond repair.
Vargas thought that the neighborhood – a juxtaposition that represents a Lima in flux – worked well with the lives of the main characters of his book. “They are journalists who represent perhaps the most debased form of journalism, which is defined by gossip and sensationalism,” he said. “It’s a story that has to do a lot with that contemporary subculture and that is so universal because it’s something that first-world and third-world countries share. There is practically no culture or language that doesn’t have gossip and scandal-driven journalism.”
It still took him a few more visits to decide on the title.