• Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel literature laureate and a giant of Latin American letters for many decades, passed away on April 14. He was 89.

• He was author of celebrated novels such as ‘The Time of the Hero’ (La Ciudad y los Perros) and ‘Feast of the Goat’.

• A prolific novelist and essayist and winner of myriad prizes, Vargas Llosa  was awarded the Nobel in 2010.

A star of the ‘Latin American Boom’

• Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936 in Arequipa, Peru.

• Vargas Llosa went to a military school, Leoncio Prado. After graduating from Colegio Nacional San Miguel in Piura, he studied law and literature in Lima and Madrid. 

• In 1959, he moved to Paris where he worked as a language teacher and as a journalist for Agence-France-Presse and the national television service of France. 

• Vargas Llosa published his first collection of stories ‘The Cubs and Other Stories’ (Los Jefes) in 1959. 

• He had an international breakthrough with the novel ‘The Time of the Hero’ in 1963. This novel, which builds on experiences from Leoncio Prado, was considered controversial in his home land. A thousand copies were burnt publicly by officers from Leoncio Prado. 

• His novels  quickly established him as one of the leaders of the so-called “Boom”, or new wave of Latin American writers of the 1960s and 1970s, alongside Gabriel Garca Marquez and Carlos Fuentes.

• After having lived alternately in Paris, Lima, London and Barcelona, he returned to Lima in 1974. In 1975 he was elected to the Peruvian Academy. He has lectured and taught at a number of universities in the USA, South America and Europe. 

• Although an early supporter of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, he later grew disillusioned and denounced Castro’s Cuba. By 1980, he said he no longer believed in socialism as a solution for developing nations.

• In a famous incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched fellow Nobel Prize winner and ex-friend Marquez, whom he later ridiculed as Castro’s courtesan. It was never clear whether the fight was over politics or a personal dispute, as neither writer ever wanted to discuss it publicly.

• In 1990 he ran for the Presidency representing the FREDEMO alliance in Peru, but lost the election. 

• In 1994 he was elected to the Spanish Academy, where he took his seat in 1996. 

• His well known works include ‘Conversation in the Cathedral’ (1969), ‘The War of the End of the World’ (1981),  and ‘The Feast of the Goat’ (2000).

• His last published novel was ‘Harsh Times’ in 2019 about a US-backed coup d’etat in Guatemala in 1954.

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