Peruvian-Spanish Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa has died at the age of 89. His son, Álvaro Vargas Llosa, announced the news on Sunday via X (formerly Twitter), marking the end of a remarkable literary and intellectual legacy.
“His departure will sadden his relatives, his friends and his readers around the world, but we hope that they will find comfort, as we do, in the fact that he enjoyed a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leaves behind him a body of work that will outlive him,” the family statement signed by his children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa read.
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Known for his works critiquing the evils of totalitarianism, Vargas Llosa’s career spanned over 50 years. Some of his notable works include The Time of the Hero (1963), Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) and The Feast of the Goat (2000).
Born in Arequipa in 1936, Vargas began his career as a crime reporter at the age of 15. When he was 19, Vargas eloped with his 32-year-old aunt, Julia Urquidi, which his father described as a “virile act”. Following a trip to Paris, Vargas lived in Madrid, Barcelona, and London. During this time, he worked as a journalist, teacher and broadcaster.
Despite living abroad, he made sure to visit his homeland through his works.
He made his mark in his very first novel. Published in 1963, The Time of the Hero followed a story of a murder at the Leoncio Prado military academy and its cover-up. The story was deemed so shocking that nearly a thousand copies were burnt on the school’s parade ground in Peru.
The author also had an interesting relationship with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In 1976, when Marquez greeted him outside a Mexico City cinema, Vargas punched him in the face. Addressing their long-time feud three years after Marquez died in 2014, Vargas said that he was sad to hear of his former friend’s death but didn’t elaborate on the reasons behind their apparent animosity.
As he published more works, including Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977) and The War of the End of the World (1981), cementing his literary repertoire, Vargas became increasingly involved in politics.
In 1984, he turned down an offer from the conservative president Fernando Belaúnde Terry to become his prime minister. Three years later, he protested against plans to nationalise the financial system in Peru. Nearly 12,000 people joined him. He then launched a presidential campaign.
In 1990, Vargas was defeated in the second round by Alberto Fujimori. Within hours, Vargas left the country.
In 1993, he took up Spanish citizenship and continued to produce a stream of plays, essays and novels. Exploring the themes of power and corruption in The Feast of the Goat (2000) and The Bad Girl (2006), which follows an on-off affair spanning over 40 years, Vargas won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature for the latter.
The laureate also spoke out against manipulation in the Peruvian media and criticised propaganda from Donald Trump and the Russian Federation. However, in May 2022, he supported Brazil’s far-right former leader Jair Bolsonaro over Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s general elections.
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His romantic life was as coloured as his career – both literary and political. After divorcing his first wife in 1964, he married his first cousin, Patricia Llosa. In 2015, after 50 years of marriage, he left her for Isabel Preysler, the mother of singer Enrique Iglesias. The relationship came to an end in 2022.
A year later, he announced his new novel Le dedico mi silencio (I Give You My Silence), to be his last; however, he had doubts if he would ever finish it since he usually takes at least three to four years.
