Peruvian Nobel literature laureate and Latin American literary giant Mario Vargas Llosa has died in Lima at the age of 89.
The writer’s son Álvaro Vargos Llosa announced on Sunday that his father had “passed away peacefully in Lima…, surrounded by his family” in a social media post, signed by himself and his siblings Gonzalo and Morgana.
“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,” read the post.
Born in the southern Peruvian city Arequipa in 1936, Vargas Llosa spent his early childhood in Cochabamba, Bolivia with his mother and grandparents, after his parents divorced while he was a young child.
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Returning to Peru at the age of 10, he was sent to a military academy from age 14 to 16 years old, which would inspire his 1963 breakthrough novel The Time of the Hero. The novel angered the Peruvian authorities which had 1,000 copies destroyed.
This work and further early novels, including The Green House (1966) and Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), would earn him a place as one of the key figures of the Latin American Boom literary movement of the 1960s and 70s, alongside the likes of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes.
Vargas Llosa had moved to Madrid in 1958 and then on to Paris in 1959, living there until 1966. He later said that it was only on leaving his native Peru that he had come to understand his place as a Latin American writer.
A prolific writer, journalist and essayist throughout his life, his literary work spans more than 50 titles. A number of his books were adapted to film and TV including his 1977 novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, inspired by his first marriage to writer Julia Urquidi.
Jon Amiel adapted the novel to the big screen in 1990 under the title of Tune in Tomorrow. William Boyd wrote the screenplay, while the cast featured Barbara Hershey, Keanu Reeves and Peter Falk.
More recently, TelevisaUnivision’s Vix+ streaming service adapted Vargas Llosa’s 2010 novel Travesuras de la Niña Mala (The Bad Girl) into a 10-part series in 2022, and was also developing a new show based on his 1973 work Captain Pantoja and the Special Service.
Most recently, his novel Tattoos in Memory, about a former terrorist and soldier who becomes a Franciscan priest, was adapted to the big screen in Peru by his cousin, the director Luis Llosa (Anaconda), releasing in August, 2024.
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