Mario Vargas Llosa: Giant of Latin American literature

The Peruvian was called a "divinely gifted story-teller" when he won the Nobel in 2010.

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With more than 50 works to his name, many of which have been widely translated, Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 when judges dubbed him a "divinely gifted story-teller". His depictions of authoritarianism, violence and machismo, using rich language and imagery, made him a star of the Latin American Boom literary movement that shone a global spotlight on the continent.

At first sympathetic to left-wing ideas, he grew disillusioned with Latin America's revolutionary causes, eventually running unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency with a centre-right party in 1990.

Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 to a middle-class family in Arequipa in southern Peru. After his parents separated while he was an infant, he moved to Cochabamba in Bolivia with his great-grandparents. He returned to Peru aged 10 and six years later he wrote his first play, The Escape of the Inca. He graduated from Lima University, studied in Spain and later moved to Paris.

His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was an indictment of corruption and abuse at a Peruvian military school. Written at a time when the country's military wielded significant political and social power, it was published in 1962.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg41r4kx0lko

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