Art is long and life is short, warns Vargas Llosa

Damien Hirst: the controversial English artist is in Mario Vargas Llosa’s sights. Picture: Getty

Culture: Notes on the Death. of Culture

By Mario Vargas Llosa

Faber, €27

Reviewed by Sarah Gilmartin

As the global financial crash shook Wall Street in September 2008, hordes of tabloid journalists ran about the city looking for a broker who might be about to jump from a skyscraper. This depressing image of humanity is an apt anecdote for the opening essay of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa’s Notes on the Death of ...