Mario Vargas Llosa.

Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936, in Arequipa, Peru, to Dora Llosa Ureta and Ernesto Vargas Maldonado. His parents separated before his birth, and he spent much of his early childhood in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with his maternal family. At age fourteen, his father sent him to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, an experience that later inspired his breakthrough novel The Time of the Hero. He attended Colegio La Salle and Colegio San Miguel de Piura before studying law and literature at the National University of San Marcos and later earning a doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Vargas Llosa gained international recognition in the 1960s with his first novel, The Time of the Hero 1963, which won the Premio Biblioteca Breve. He followed with The Green House 1965, winner of the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1967, and Conversation in the Cathedral 1969, a work often studied in Spanish-language literature. He wrote prolifically across genres, including literary criticism and journalism, and adapted his own works for film, such as Pantaleon 1976 and Captain Pantoja and the Special Services 1999. In 1990 he ran for president of Peru with the center-right Frente Democrático coalition but lost to Alberto Fujimori. The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010.

Vargas Llosa married Julia Urquidi in 1955; the marriage ended in divorce in 1964. He then married Patricia Llosa in 1965, with whom he had three children: Álvaro, Morgana, and Gonzalo. Politically active, he initially supported the Cuban Revolution but became disillusioned after the imprisonment of poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, later identifying as a liberal and holding anti-left-wing views. He served on juries at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976, the Berlin International Film Festival in 1984, and the Venice Film Festival in 1994.

Vargas Llosa influenced Latin American literature as one of the leading writers of the Latin American Boom alongside Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar. His work reached a global audience and reshaped modern Spanish-language literature. He received numerous honors, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1994, the Jerusalem Prize in 1995, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. In 2023 he was elected to the Académie française. He died in Lima on April 13, 2025, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.