Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Laureate and Literary Giant, Dies at 89

Mario Vargas Llosa, the esteemed Peruvian author and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, has passed away at the age of 89, Bloomberg reports.

His son, Alvaro, announced his death on social media, without specifying a cause.

Vargas Llosa, a towering figure in both literature and politics throughout Latin America, had retired from public life at the end of 2023 and was residing in Lima at the time of his death.

Renowned for his novels that delved into the military dictatorships and political corruption prevalent in Latin America, Vargas Llosa authored over 60 novels, plays, and works of non-fiction. His works explored the brutality of power and the resilient spirit of those caught in its web, while also encompassing comic and erotic novels, as well as literary criticism.

As a leading Latin American writer and intellectual, Vargas Llosa championed individual liberty, democracy, and free markets, often placing him at odds with his contemporaries and political leaders in the region.

He was a prominent member of the influential wave of Latin American writers, alongside Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, who revolutionized Latin American literature and provided insightful commentary on the region’s political struggles during the 1960s and 1970s. Fuentes passed away in 2012, followed by Garcia Marquez in 2014.

After a failed presidential campaign in Peru in 1990, Vargas Llosa vowed not to seek elective office again. His rival in that election, former president Alberto Fujimori, died in 2024.

Vargas Llosa’s acclaimed novels include Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), set in 1950s Peru under a dictatorship, and The Feast of the Goat (2000), which examined the regime of General Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Both novels serve as powerful studies of the psychology of power and its corrupting influence on human integrity.

José Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936, in Arequipa, a city in the southern Andes. His parents separated five months before his birth and reunited when he was 10.