''The way to Paradise'' is an interesting novel (2003) reuniting the painter Paul Gauguin and Flora Tristan withing alternative narratives.
Flora Tristan is the grandmother of the painter and an early founder of feminism.
Paul Gauguin didn't actually meet Flora Tristan, considering his grandmother died before the painter was born.
However, in Llosa's novel, the two protagonists seem to have similar life quests, being inflicted with the need to get away from the conventional demands of the society,
The development of their life stories is interesting to follow and somehow portrays the secret desire to act similarly for some of us. More specifically, Gauguin abandons his old life - his old job, wife, and children and pursuits his passion for painting away from ordinary civilization whereas Flora Tristan hates sex, has a dislike for her husband, and later decides to abandon him and to fight for women's and workers' rights.
Anyway, what seems to be a paradise, comes along with passion, despair, sickness, and ambition. Furthermore, the way Llosa can portray this quest for greatness while struggling with life I guess makes him even more entitled to have won The Nobel Prize for literature later in 2010.