Remembering Mario Vargas Llosa: Celebrated Peruvian Novelist and Nobel Laureate Passes Away at 89
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, a Nobel laureate in literature and a towering figure in Latin American literature for several decades, has passed away, according to his son. He was 89 years old.
“It is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,” stated a letter signed by his children Álvaro, Gonzalo, and Morgana, which Álvaro shared on social media.
The letter indicated that his remains will be cremated, and there will be no public ceremony.
“His departure will sadden his relatives, friends, and readers around the globe, but we hope that they will find solace, as we do, in the fact that he lived a long, adventurous, and fruitful life, and leaves behind a body of work that will endure,” they added.
Vargas Llosa was the author of renowned novels such as *The Time of the Hero* (*La Ciudad y los Perros*) and *Feast of the Goat*.
A prolific novelist and essayist, he received numerous awards and was honored with the Nobel Prize in 2010 after being considered a candidate for many years.
Vargas Llosa published his first collection of stories, *The Cubs and Other Stories* (*Los Jefes*), in 1959. However, he made a significant impact on the literary scene in 1963 with his groundbreaking debut novel, *The Time of the Hero*, which drew on his experiences at a Peruvian military academy and provoked anger from the country’s military authorities. In response, a thousand copies of the novel were burned, with some generals labeling the book as false and Vargas Llosa as a communist.
Subsequent works, including *Conversation in the Cathedral* (*Conversación en la Catedral*) in 1969, quickly established Vargas Llosa as a leading figure in the “Boom,” a movement of new Latin American writers of the 1960s and 1970s, alongside luminaries like Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes.
Vargas Llosa began writing at an early age, working as a part-time crime reporter for *La Crónica* newspaper when he was just 15. His varied career also included roles such as revising names on grave markers in Peru, teaching at the Berlitz school in Paris, and a brief stint on the Spanish desk at Agence France-Presse in Paris.
For most of his life, he continued to publish articles, especially in a political opinion column titled *Piedra de Toque* (*Touchstones*), which appeared in several newspapers.
He emerged as a strong advocate for personal and economic freedoms, gradually distancing himself from his earlier communist affiliations and frequently criticizing Latin American leftist leaders whom he perceived as dictators.
Although initially a supporter of Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution, he later became disillusioned and publicly denounced Castro’s regime. By 1980, he expressed his belief that socialism was no longer a viable solution for developing nations.
In a notable incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa and fellow Nobel laureate García Márquez had a physical confrontation, which neither writer ever publicly clarified as either a political disagreement or a personal altercation.
As Vargas Llosa shifted his political views toward free-market conservatism, he alienated many of his contemporaries in the Latin American literary scene and faced criticism even from his supporters.
Born Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa on March 28, 1936, in Arequipa, Peru, he grew up in the shadow of the Misti volcano. His father, Ernesto Vargas Maldonado, left the family before he was born. To avoid public scandal, his mother, Dora Llosa Ureta, took him to Bolivia, where her father served as the Peruvian consul in Cochabamba.
Vargas Llosa later described his early life as “somewhat traumatic,” having been pampered by his mother and grandmother in a large house with servants, where his every whim was indulged.
It wasn’t until he was 10, after the family returned to Peru’s coastal city of Piura, that he discovered his father was alive. His parents reconciled, and the family relocated to Lima.
Vargas Llosa characterized his father as a strict disciplinarian who dismissed his son’s love for Jules Verne and poetry as paths to starvation, fearing for his “manhood,” and believing that “poets are always homosexuals.”
After failing to secure his son’s admission to a naval academy due to age restrictions, Vargas Llosa’s father sent him to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, an experience that deeply influenced him and inspired *The Time of the Hero*, which won the Spanish Critics Award.
Vargas Llosa later remarked that the military academy “was like discovering hell.”
He attended San Marcos University in Peru to study literature and law, pursuing literature as a calling while studying law to satisfy his family’s belief that writers often struggle financially.
After obtaining his literature degree in 1958—having opted not to submit his final law thesis—Vargas Llosa received a scholarship to pursue a doctorate in Madrid.
While he drew significant inspiration from his Peruvian roots, he preferred to live abroad, spending time each year in Madrid, New York, and Paris.
His early novels vividly depicted a Peruvian landscape characterized by military arrogance, brutality, aristocratic decadence, and indigenous Amazonian communities coexisting with urban decay.
“Peru is a kind of incurable illness, and my relationship with it is intense, harsh, and filled with the violence of passion,” Vargas Llosa wrote in 1983.
After 16 years in Europe, he returned to Peru in 1974, during a period under a left-wing military dictatorship. “I realized I was losing touch with the reality of my country, particularly its language, which for a writer can be deadly,” he reflected.
In 1990, he entered the presidential race in Peru, reluctantly stepping forward in a nation grappling with a Maoist guerrilla insurgency and rampant hyperinflation.
However, he was defeated by the then-unknown university rector Alberto Fujimori, who later addressed much of the political and economic turmoil but ultimately became a corrupt and authoritarian leader.
Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a long-time friend of Vargas Llosa, later admitted to having hoped for his defeat, stating, “Peru’s uncertain gain would be literature’s loss. Literature is eternity; politics is mere history.”
Vargas Llosa also channeled his literary talents into successful novels about real figures, including French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan in *The Way to Paradise* (2003) and 19th-century Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement in *The Dream of the Celt* (2010). His most recent novel, *Harsh Times* (*Tiempos Recios*), published in 2019, centers on a U.S.-backed coup in Guatemala in 1954.
He became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1994 and held various visiting professor and resident writer positions at numerous colleges and universities worldwide.
In his youth, Vargas Llosa joined a communist group and eloped with Julia Urquidi, a 33-year-old Bolivian and his uncle’s sister-in-law. Their nine-year marriage inspired his popular comic novel *Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter* (*La Tía Julia y el Escribidor*).
In 1965, he married Patricia Llosa, his first cousin, who was ten years younger. They had three children but divorced 50 years later. He subsequently began a relationship with Spanish socialite Isabel Preysler, the former wife of singer Julio Iglesias and mother of Enrique Iglesias, but they separated in 2022.
Vargas Llosa is survived by his children.
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