Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has died aged 89, after a career spanning decades that produced dozens of works, courted controversy, provoked powerful interests in his native Peru and earned him the Nobel Prize for literature.
A giant of Latin American culture, Vargas Llosa used powerful imagery and sometimes fantastical storytelling to explore issues of male violence, societal disruption and authoritarian politics, and shone a spotlight on his native continent during what was often long periods of political repressions or unrest.
He was born in the southern city of Arequipa in Peru, but lived in Bolivia as a child for several years before returning to Peru where he spent time in a military academy that later became the subject of his first book, The Time of the Hero, published in 1962.
The novel sparked huge anger in the country’s military elite at the time, and earned him criticism from some of Peru’s top generals. But he continued to write about his nation’s challenges in his novels, while living in cities that included Paris, Lima and later, Madrid.
He sought to enter the political arena in 1990 as a right-wing party’s candidate for president of Peru, though he lost. Shortly after his Nobel Prize win, he told NPR that literature is about more than politics — it is about life in all its dimensions.
In recent years, he attracted criticism for comments about topics including feminism’s role in literature and the soaring death toll of Mexican journalists, but his books continued to be reprinted and sold in dozens of different languages worldwide.
He died in Lima on Sunday, surrounded by his family and “at peace,” his son announced in a statement.
Source: NPR