Peruvian literary giant Alfredo Bryce Echenique has died at the age of 87.
He is best known for the 1970 novel A World for Julius, which chronicled the frivolous lives of the elite in Peru’s capital Lima through the eyes of an orphan.
His works were marked by irony, melancholy and acute observation of social inequality. He won numerous prizes and became one of the most recognised voices in Hispanic literature.
Peru’s presidency paid tribute Bryce Echenique on X, saying he left “an immense void but an eternal legacy”.
Bryce Echenique was born in Lima in 1939 to a wealthy family, and his great-great-grandfather was a president of the republic. He saw at first hand how the elite looked down on ordinary Peruvians, and this experience set the scene for his novel.
A World for Julius was an instant success at a time when a left-wing military government was championing the correction of historical inequalities in Peru. With it he won the National Prize for Literature of Peru.
He followed this with more novels like So Many Times Pedro and The Exaggerated Life of Martín Romaña, which displayed his capacity for irony and penetration into the human soul that characterised his work.
But he lived abroad from the 1960s until 1999, mainly writing and teaching in France and Spain, before ending what he called his “voluntary exile” and returning to Peru.
In Peruvian literature he is considered second only to Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who died last year.
Vargas Llosa’s son Alvaro praised Bryce Echenique on social media, describing him as “one of the great Peruvian writers, and of the Spanish language”.
Credit: BBC
