Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel laureate in Literature from Peru, has reportedly contracted COVID-19 for the second time. Since Saturday, he has been receiving medical treatment at a hospital in Madrid, Spain.
The 87-year-old is being cared for there by "excellent doctors," his children Alvaro Mario and Morgana Vargas Llosa wrote on Twitter on Monday. No information was given about his condition.
He had already recovered from COVID-19 in April 2022.
Born in Peru in 1936, Vargas Llosa, a last survivor of a golden generation of Latin American literary giants, gained Spanish citizenship in 1993.
Madrid newspaper El Pais, which publishes a weekly column by the writer, reported that he was being treated at a capital hospital and was in "stable" condition, citing family sources.
"He is being treated by excellent professionals and surrounded by his family," his children said in the statement.
Admired for his depiction of social realities but criticized within Latin American intellectual circles for his conservative positions, Vargas Llosa is a leading light of the "boom" generation that included greats such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar.
Vargas Llosa, who often stirs controversy with his political positions and who was defeated by Alberto Fujimori as a center-right candidate in the 1990 presidential election in Peru, is still very active despite his age.
In March, he received the Order of the Sun of Peru, the Andean country's highest honor, from interim President Dina Boluarte in his South American homeland.
In the same month, he took part in an event on his work at the Spanish Cervantes cultural institute in Madrid.
In February, he was the first writer not to write in French to be admitted to France's esteemed Academie Française.
