In October 2010, when Gabriel García Márquez, by then suffering from dementia, was told that his former friend and rival had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he enquired: ‘Who is Mario Vargas Llosa?’ As well, his Stockholm audience was aware that Vargas Llosa’s cool, amiable, belligerently frank demeanour camouflaged a turbulent private life. ’, Vargas Llosa fled Mexico, never spoke again to García Márquez and withdrew from circulation his 667-page critical study of his ‘official best friend – and unofficial nemesis’. In Martin’s reading, Vargas Llosa dedicated himself to literature precisely to avoid examining his foundational narrative. Never someone to brook competition, Mario suffered a catatonic eruption when he next saw García Márquez in that cinema foyer.