Fallece Mario Vargas Llosa, escritor peruano galardonado con el Premio Nobel de Literatura.

 LIMA (AP) — The Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize winner in literature and giant of Latin American letters, passed away on Sunday, his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa announced. He was 89 years old. “With deep sorrow, we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away today in Lima, surrounded by his family and in peace,” he said in a statement on his Twitter account. No information was given about the cause of death or where it occurred. A prolific novelist, essayist, and recipient of multiple awards, Vargas Llosa received the Nobel Prize in 2010 after being considered a contender for the award for many years. Vargas Llosa made his debut with his short story collection “Los jefes” in 1959. But he achieved fame in 1963 with his groundbreaking first novel “The Time of the Hero,” which was inspired by his experience in a Peruvian military school and caused anger among the country’s military. A thousand copies of the book were burned by the military authorities and some generals called the book false and Vargas Llosa a communist. This and his subsequent novels such as “Conversation in the Cathedral” in 1969, quickly established Vargas Llosa as one of the leaders of the Latin American literary Boom of the mid-20th century, along with Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. Vargas Llosa began writing at an early age and at 15 he was a part-time reporter for the newspaper La Crónica. He continued to publish articles for the press for most of his life, especially in a biweekly column on politics that was published in various newspapers internationally. In his adolescence, he joined a communist cell and secretly married the Bolivian Julia Urquidi, who was his uncle’s sister-in-law. Their nine-year marriage inspired him to write his novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.” In 1965, he married his cousin Patricia Llosa, who was 10 years younger than him, and they had three children together. Vargas Llosa became a staunch defender of economic and personal freedom, gradually distancing himself from his communist past and often attacking left-wing leaders in Latin America whom he considered dictators. Although he was an early sympathizer of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, he eventually became disillusioned and denounced the Castro regime. By 1980, he said he no longer believed in socialism as the solution for developing countries. In a famous incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez, who had been his friend and was also a Nobel Prize winner. Years later, he ridiculed him as a “courtier of Castro.” The reasons for the fight were never clarified and both writers avoided speaking publicly about it. Slowly, Vargas Llosa steered his political views towards the right and became a vocal critic of left-wing governments in Latin America. He continued to write and publish until his death, leaving behind a legacy of influential and thought-provoking literature.

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