Mar 11, 2026
3 min read
"Julius was born in a building on Salaverry Avenue, opposite the old San Felipe racetrack; a building with a garage, gardens, a swimming pool, a small field where the two...
“Julius was born in a palace at Vial Salaverra, opposite the old course of San Felipe;a palace with garages, gardens, a swimming pool, a small garden, where at the age of two he got lost, and they always found him standing on his back, looking, for example, at a flower;with apartments for servants, like a birthmark on the most beautiful face."
This is how the Land of Julius began, the first book of the Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique (Lima, 1939), this book was born as a young, naive and intelligent brother of the first books of the Latin American Boom that destroyed the bookstores six years ago.With Julius, Bryce, who was three years younger than Mario Vargas Llosa and more than ten years older than García Márquez and José Donoso, added, raised, mocked and rejected the great stories of his elders and took himself into the new decade.He brought Latin American literature to the world of popular culture and music, he exposed it to New York's Jewish comedy, the fear of urosis and psychoanalysis, the viceregal baroque aesthetics... For many years, Bryce was close to fame and popularity with the authorities.Word of his death came this Tuesday from Lima when the world had already forgotten him.
It is forgotten until the first line of ``The World for Julius'' reappears."Be careful, even the carriage that your great-grandfather Julius used when he was President of the Republic! Don't touch it, it's full of cobwebs. He turned his back on his mother, who was clean, and tried to reach for the doorknob," the novel continues at the beginning.Julius, the charm of "Don't touch me, love me, don't do that, dear."Yet his father had died.”Doesn’t that all sound like bebop?
Alfredo Bryce Echenique was Julius.Not exactly but almost.He was born in the Peru of Parisian architecture, in the neighborhood of Magdalena, in a world about to disappear, which he would obsessively evoke in his books.The Proustian mother, the banker father, who would be ruined by a left-wing government, the private schools (the Immaculate Heart that would fill so many pages), the mansions that cannot be filled, the servants of another world, the Marxist universities, the San Isidro country clubs, the longing to go to Europe to find the real life... Bryce was born as a writer at the same age as Marko25 law graduate.Conversation in La Cathedral), with a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris and obsessed with Hemingway.In Paris, Bryce came into contact with the great Peruvian writer in exile, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, and wrote the stories of his first book, Huerto cerca, a set much more minimalist and austere than the image we have of its author today.More Hemingway and Ribeyro than Woody Allen, to be clear.The stories of Huerto Cerrado share a protagonist, a young man from Lima named Manolo, who enters adulthood through the rituals of the Lima bourgeoisie: the brothel, family boredom, hypocrisy, racism, sweetness, claustrophobia... Manolo de Huerto Cerrado is an underclass who looks at his people from the outside but does so with compassion and good humor.That must have been Bryce's frame.
The last "boom"
Huerto Rufe was published in Havana and, later, in Seix Barral, in Barcelona, of which Vargas Llosa was involved.buzzy ... Julius is an only child on Salaverry Avenue, on the Paris side of Cercado de Lima.His mother is a half-English widow, young and beautiful, and has a fiancé, a certain Juan Lucas who is interested in America and plays golf.He also has a sister who will face disaster, two evil brothers, and a second family of slaves who will truly be with him on his journey to adulthood.Julius ends up weak.
At the end of the novel, the main character discovers that the most beloved of the servants in his house is a prostitute in his days off and that news ends his innocence.Thus, for many years there has been a temptation to read a novel in political terms.Bryce's work contradicts that idea: what is important to Julius is his approach, his tradition and his humor, the words that characterize the following great novels of Bryce Echenique: So sino muldo óir Pedro (1977), The exaggerated life of Martin Romaña (1981) and The man who spoke on Octavia of Cádiz (1985).
Let's look at the first lines of Martin Romagna: "My name is Martin Romagna and this is the story of my positive crisis. And also the story of my blue notebook. This is the story of my blue notebook, moreover, one day I needed a red notebook to continue the story of my blue notebook. All, Voltaire must remember that in simple reality it is often not in the chair..." in understanding and I think it is the initial desire to follow the law.
So Julius in 1970 became a divine neurotic 11 years later.Drinker, resident, manic-depressive, consumerist, skeptic, in love and self-parody... Martín Romaña and Octavia de Cádiz were two books that might seem very modern to us today.During the most glorious moments of his career, Bryce developed a public persona that seemed designed to validate his books.There are over a thousand anecdotes about Bryce, the semi-alcoholic dandy and seemingly lovable man.He fell asleep during his lectures, defended his friends in fights with incredible karate kicks, and sang songs in his honor.“Born a hairless Basque / From a penniless Englishman / For a Roman / Alfredo Bryce Echenique.”
The second half of Bryce Echenique's career moved towards contraction and sadness: the chaotic life was taking a toll on him and he was losing momentum.The best books of his last years were collections of stories that traveled from excitement to brevity, such as The Wife of the King of Curves.Bryce won awards and released best sellers that took him away from the world's heartstrings and became infamous at the time due to a blatant plagiarism scandal in the press.During the last decade of his life he went into seclusion.It was quite a bitter end for a great writer.
