66 Facts About Mario Vargas Llosa

Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation.

Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero, The Green House, and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral.

Mario Vargas Llosa writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism.

Mario Vargas Llosa's novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers.

Mario Vargas Llosa ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990 with the center-right Frente Democratico coalition, advocating classical liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori.

Mario Vargas Llosa is the person who, in 1990, "coined the phrase that circled the globe", declaring on Mexican television, "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship", a statement that became an adage during the following decade.

Vargas Llosa is one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

Mario Vargas Llosa was born to a middle-class family on 28 March 1936, in the southern Peruvian provincial city of Arequipa.

Mario Vargas Llosa was the only child of Ernesto Vargas Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta, who separated a few months before his birth.

Shortly after Mario's birth, his father revealed that he was having an affair with a German woman; consequently, Mario has two younger half-brothers: Enrique and Ernesto Vargas.

Vargas Llosa lived with his maternal family in Arequipa until a year after his parents' divorce, when his maternal grandfather was named honorary consul for Peru in Bolivia.

Mario Vargas Llosa's parents re-established their relationship and lived in Magdalena del Mar, a middle-class Lima suburb, during his teenage years.

When Vargas Llosa was fourteen, his father sent him to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima.

At the age of 16, before his graduation, Vargas Llosa began working as an amateur journalist for local newspapers.

Mario Vargas Llosa withdrew from the military academy and finished his studies in Piura, where he worked for the local newspaper, La Industria, and witnessed the theatrical performance of his first dramatic work, La huida del Inca.

In 1953, during the government of Manuel A Odria, Vargas Llosa enrolled in Lima's National University of San Marcos, to study law and literature.

Vargas Llosa began his literary career in earnest in 1957 with the publication of his first short stories, "The Leaders" and "The Grandfather", while working for two Peruvian newspapers.

In 1960, after his scholarship in Madrid had expired, Vargas Llosa moved to France under the impression that he would receive a scholarship to study there; however, upon arriving in Paris, he learned that his scholarship request was denied.

Several Peruvian generals attacked the novel, claiming that it was the work of a "degenerate mind" and stating that Vargas Llosa was "paid by Ecuador" to undermine the prestige of the Peruvian Army.

In 1965, Vargas Llosa published his second novel, The Green House, about a brothel called "The Green House" and how its quasi-mythical presence affects the lives of the characters.

Mario Vargas Llosa lectured on Spanish American Literature at King's College London from 1969 to 1970.

In 1971, Vargas Llosa published Garcia Marquez: Story of a Deicide, which was his doctoral thesis for the Complutense University of Madrid.

In 1976, Vargas Llosa punched Garcia Marquez in the face in Mexico City at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, ending the friendship.

From 1974 to 1987, Vargas Llosa focused on his writing, but took the time to pursue other endeavors.

In 1977, Vargas Llosa was elected as a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language, a membership he still holds today.

Mario Vargas Llosa later wrote a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo, in which she gives her personal account of their relationship.

Vargas Llosa says that this book is his favorite and was his most difficult accomplishment.

Later the same year, during the Sendero Luminoso uprising, Vargas Llosa was asked by the Peruvian President Fernando Belaunde Terry to join the Investigatory Commission, a task force to inquire into the massacre of eight journalists at the hands of the villagers of Uchuraccay.

In 2006, Vargas Llosa wrote The Bad Girl, which journalist Kathryn Harrison argues is a rewrite of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

Mario Vargas Llosa studied Marxism in depth as a university student and was later persuaded by communist ideals after the success of the Cuban Revolution.

Gradually, Vargas Llosa came to believe that socialism was incompatible with what he considered to be general liberties and freedoms.

Vargas Llosa has identified himself with liberalism rather than extreme left-wing political ideologies ever since.

Unfortunately for Vargas Llosa, his involvement with the Investigatory Commission led to immediate negative reactions and defamation from the Peruvian press; many suggested that the massacre was a conspiracy to keep the journalists from reporting the presence of government paramilitary forces in Uchuraccay.

Vargas Llosa was accused of actively colluding in a government cover-up of army involvement in the massacre.

Mario Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990 as the candidate of the FREDEMO coalition with the support of the United States.

Mario Vargas Llosa proposed neoliberal policies similar to Fujimori that included a drastic economic austerity program that frightened most of the country's poor; this program emphasized the need for privatization, a market economy, free trade, and most importantly, the dissemination of private property.

Vargas Llosa included an account of his run for the presidency in the memoir A Fish in the Water.

Vargas Llosa has mainly lived in Madrid since the 1990s, but spends roughly three months of the year in Peru with his extended family.

Vargas Llosa acquired Spanish citizenship in 1993, though he still holds Peruvian nationality.

Mario Vargas Llosa is a member of Washington, DC based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue.

Mario Vargas Llosa has been involved in the Spain's political arena.

Mario Vargas Llosa continues to write, both journalism and fiction, and to travel extensively.

Mario Vargas Llosa has taught as a visiting professor at a number of prominent universities.

Since her introduction into politics, Vargas Llosa has had a complex opinion on conservative politician Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the authoritarian president of Peru Alberto Fujimori.

However, in the second round of the 2021 Peruvian general election, Vargas Llosa expressed support for Keiko, sharing opposition to far-left candidate Pedro Castillo and describing Fujimori as the "lesser of two evils".

Vargas Llosa was named in both the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Vargas Llosa frequently uses his writing to challenge the inadequacies of society, such as demoralization and oppression by those in political power towards those who challenge this power.

The Feast of the Goat, based on the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, takes place in the Dominican Republic; in preparation for this novel, Vargas Llosa undertook a comprehensive study of Dominican history.

Unfortunately, Vargas Llosa was not as successful in transforming these historical figures into fiction.

The works of Mario Vargas Llosa are viewed as both modernist and postmodernist novels.

Vargas Llosa sometimes uses this technique as a means of shifting location by weaving together two concurrent conversations happening in different places.

Mario Vargas Llosa was looking for a style different from the traditional descriptions of land and rural life made famous by Peru's foremost novelist at the time, Jose Maria Arguedas.

Vargas Llosa wrote of Arguedas's work that it was "an example of old-fashioned regionalism that had already exhausted its imaginary possibilities".

Rather than restrict himself to Peruvian literature, Vargas Llosa looked abroad for literary inspiration.

Vargas Llosa considers Faulkner "the writer who perfected the methods of the modern novel".

Mario Vargas Llosa is an agnostic, "I was not a believer, nor was I an atheist either, but, rather, an agnostic".

In February 2011, Vargas Llosa was awarded an honorary life membership of this football club, in a ceremony which took place in the Monumental Stadium of Lima.

Mario Vargas Llosa was infected with COVID-19 and was hospitalized in April 2022.

Mario Vargas Llosa is considered a major Latin American writer, alongside other authors such as Octavio Paz, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende.

Vargas Llosa is noted for his substantial contribution to journalism, an accomplishment characteristic of few other Latin American writers.

Mario Vargas Llosa is recognized among those who have most consciously promoted literature in general, and more specifically the novel itself, as avenues for meaningful commentary about life.

Vargas Llosa has won numerous awards for his writing, from the 1959 Premio Leopoldo Alas and the 1962 Premio Biblioteca Breve to the 1993 Premio Planeta and the Jerusalem Prize in 1995.

Vargas Llosa received the 2005 Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute and was the 2008 recipient of the Harold and Ethel L Stellfox Visiting Scholar and Writers Award at Dickinson College.

On 18 November 2010, Vargas Llosa received the honorary degree Degree of Letters from the City College of New York of the City University of New York, where he delivered the President's Lecture.

On 4 February 2011, Vargas Llosa was raised into the Spanish nobility by King Juan Carlos I with the hereditary title of Marques de Vargas Llosa.

On 25 November 2021, Vargas Llosa was elected to the Academie francaise.