Bryce Echenique Delivers Original Manuscript of 'A World for Julius' to Cervantes

The Caja de las Letras at the Instituto Cervantes has received the original typescript of 'A World for Julius' by Alfredo Bryce Echenique (Lima, 1939). This is the most iconic novel by the octogenarian Peruvian writer, a key figure of the second boom generation of Latin American narrative. The donation expands the legacy of the narrator already held by Cervantes.

The original is a complete document of the novel, typed in the late 1960s. It consists of 458 pages without annotations, but with corrections in the author's handwriting. It is a donation from Julio Ribeyro Cordero, the son of the Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro.

'A World for Julius' "offers a portrait of a happy and carefree sector of the Lima oligarchy that, in reality, reflects the world of the oligarchy in many other contemporary cities," observes Cervantes.

It was chosen as the best Peruvian novel of all time in a survey of 80 Peruvian writers and critics for the magazine Debate. It won the National Literature Prize of Peru in 1972 and was awarded the prize for best novel in France in 1974. Filmmaker Rossana Díaz Costa adapted it for the cinema in 2021.

Bryce Echenique confessed to being "moved" by the handover ceremony held at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, during a tribute to the Peruvian author, who recalled his university years. "The Peruvian world is 'sui generis', it is always said, and it has a special strength and vitality," Bryce noted after urging the new generation of writers to be constant and feel free to create.

Ángel Esteban, a professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Granada, found the manuscript by chance during a visit to Ribeyro's son in Paris while searching for unpublished stories by the writer. Among boxes and books, he found the nearly 500 pages of the original typescript of 'A World for Julius' that Bryce gifted more than five decades ago to his dear friend.

Esteban sought permission from Ribeyro's family to incorporate the document into the Peruvian writer's legacy at the Instituto Cervantes. The new legacy expands the previous one, deposited by Bryce Echenique in the Caja de las Letras at Cervantes in 2019. At that time, he placed nine copies of several of his books in different languages and with dedications to his friends, such as 'Permission to Withdraw' or 'Antimemories III', in safe deposit box number 1,216.