Mario Vargas Llosa

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (or "Yosa," according to the Spanish pronunciation) was born in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru and spent the early years of his life in Bolivia, where his father served as consul. He made his literary debut in 1959 with the short story collection "The Leaders," but gained worldwide fame with his first novel, "The Time of the Hero" (1963), which was translated into twelve languages and is still considered a landmark in Latin American literature. This was followed by "The Green House" (1966), "Conversation in the Cathedral" (1969), and "Captain Pantoja and the Special Service" (1973), works that established him as a fierce critic of dictatorial regimes, religious fanaticism, and military ethics. Vargas Llosa linked his name and art to the fortunes of Latin America, as well as to world literature: among other works, he wrote critical essays on Gabriel García Márquez, Flaubert, Sartre, Camus, and others, as well as plays, novels, and political texts. In 1990, he was a presidential candidate in Peru, running against conservative Alberto Fujimori, but was defeated. After his loss, he left Peru and settled in Madrid, where in 1993 he obtained Spanish citizenship. Around the same time, his autobiography "A Fish in the Water" (1993) was published. Mario Vargas Llosa has been honored with the most prestigious awards in Spanish-language literature, such as the Planeta and Cervantes prizes. He was a member of the Spanish Academy, an honorary doctorate recipient from universities such as Yale, Harvard, Oxford, the Sorbonne, the European University of Madrid, among others, and a Knight of the Order of Honor of the French Republic. In October 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat," according to the Swedish Academy. He died on April 13, 2025.