28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025

Mario Vargas Llosa, full name Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa · 秘鲁

20th–21st-century Peruvian novelist, essayist, and political activist, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature and a central figure of the Latin American "Boom".

Born on 28 March 1936 in Arequipa, southern Peru, he lived as a child with his mother and maternal grandparents in Cochabamba, Bolivia, then returned to Peru to study in Piura and Lima; his father's sending him to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima became material for *The Time of the Hero*; *The Time of the Hero* (1963), *The Green House* (1966), and *Conversation in the Cathedral* (1969) established his position; in 1990 he ran for president of Peru and lost; in 2010 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the citation praising him for depicting "power structures and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat"; he died in Lima on 13 April 2025.

People & stories

Places in their life

Birthplace Arequipa; places of activity Lima (San Marcos University, the military academy), Piura, and Cochabamba (Bolivia, childhood home); burial place: not stated in this batch's sources, uncertain.

People

Cultural significance

With polyphonic narrative and analysis of power structures he wrote Peru's social contradictions into world literature, while as a liberal he long intervened in Latin American public debate, making him one of Peru's most internationally recognisable contemporary cultural names.

Sources