Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian-Spanish Nobel Prize-winning author whose work focused on the evils of totalitarianism and who once ran for president, has died at age 89, according to his family. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas LLosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,\u201d said a family statement shared by his son \u00c1lvaro Vargas Llosa on X on Sunday. <\/p>\n
Vargas Llosa will be best remembered for novels including \u201cConversation in the Cathedral\u201d (1969), \u201cThe War of the End of the World\u201d (1981), and \u201cAunt Julia and the Scriptwriter\u201d (1977), which was adapted for the 1990 feature film \u201cTune in Tomorrow,\u201d starring Barbara Hershey and Keanu Reeves. <\/p>\n
In 2010, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Swedish academy called \u201chis cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual\u2019s resistance, revolt, and defeat.\u201d <\/p>\n
In their statement Sunday, the novelist\u2019s three children said Vargas Llosa\u2019s \u201cdeparture will sadden his relatives, his friends and his readers around the world.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cBut 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,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n
Vargas Llosa will be farewelled by his family and close friends at a private event, the statement added. <\/p>\n
Born in Arequipa, southern Peru, Vargas Llosa spent his early years in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where his grandfather was the Peruvian consul, before attending a military school and the National University of San Marcos in the Peruvian capital Lima. <\/p>\n
By 1952 he had published his first work, a play called \u201cLa guide del Inca,\u201d and he soon became a regular contributor to the Peruvian literary press. <\/p>\n
Vargas Llosa worked as a journalist and broadcaster, and attended the University of Madrid before moving to Paris. <\/p>\n
In 1963 he published his first novel, \u201cLa ciudad y los perros\u201d \u2013 known in English as \u201cThe Time of the Hero\u201d \u2013 to wide acclaim. It was eventually translated into more than a dozen languages. It was followed by novels including \u201cThe Green House\u201d (1966) and \u201cCaptain Pantoja and the Special Service\u201d (1973). <\/p>\n
After stints in London, where he lectured at King\u2019s College; the United States, where he spent a year as writer in residence at Washington State University; and Barcelona, he moved back to Lima in 1974. A translated collection of his essays was published in English in 1978. <\/p>\n
In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for president of Peru, on a platform of what he called classical liberalism \u2013 a belief in individual initiative, free from interference by the state. <\/p>\n
After losing the election to outsider candidate Alberto Fujimori in a second-round landslide, he moved to Spain, becoming a Spanish citizen in 1993. He won the Cervantes Prize, a prestigious Spanish literary award, a year later. <\/p>\n
Later novels included \u201cThe Feast of the Goat\u201d in 2000 and \u201cThe Bad Girl\u201d in 2006. <\/p>\n
When Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010, he told the organizers in an interview that he had been inspired by French writer Gustave Flaubert, \u201cbecause he managed, not being a born genius, to build his genius through effort, commitment, perseverance, discipline.\u201d <\/p>\n
Vargas Llosa also revealed how he believed that literature and politics were linked. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am convinced that, for example, democratic culture, culture based on freedom, on respect of human rights, was something that was possible because we had people that were sensibilized by art, by literature, by culture in general, about the sufferance, the injustices, the inequalities, the abuses who were so extended in real life,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I think literature is pleasure but it\u2019s also a very important instrument to move forward in life.\u201d <\/p>\n
This story has been updated with additional information. <\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian-Spanish Nobel Prize-winning author whose work focused on the evils of totalitarianism and who once ran for president, has died at age 89, according to his family. \u201cIt is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas LLosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}