The day Mario Vargas Llosa wowed Manila, especially the ladies.

DID YOU know that Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who will receive this years Nobel Prize for Literature, had visited Manila in the 1970s in his capacity as president of the International PEN (Poets & Playwrights, Essayists, Novelists), the organization of the worlds top writers?

He was in Manila for the annual congress of the Philippine Center of the International PEN at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. (The Philippine branch of PEN had been founded in 1958 by National Artist F. Sionil Jose.)

Handsome and articulate, Llosa, according to Philippine PEN old-timers, cut a dashing figure. Many women-writers reportedly ogled at him.

In her blog, …