India, April 18 -- Mario Vargas Llosa, in the introduction to his recent collection of essays, The Call of the Tribe, traces the trajectory of his intellectual life, which seems to be ordinary and least surprising. It is a commonplace story of numerous intellectuals and writers of the 20th century who moved on from Marxist-oriented youthful rebellious times to a maturity realising the authoritarian nature of socialist politics, abhorring cult worship, and detesting the socialist experiments. Arthur Koestler, perhaps, is the exalted figure of this ideological conversion.

This trajectory Llosa chose for himself led to shaking hands with the foundational leaders of neoliberalism - Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan - and he minutely sketch...