Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist and essayist laureate. Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize 2010.
Many consider Mario Vargas Llosa to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual′s resistance, revolt, and defeat”.
Mario Vargas Llosa made his debut in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). Through his carrer he divided himself across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His works include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Many of his novels have been cinematized.
Many of Mario Vargas Llosa′s works are influenced by the writer′s perception of Peruvian society and his own experiences as a native Peruvian. Increasingly, however, he has expanded his range, and tackled themes that arise from other parts of the world. Another change over the course of his career has been a shift from a style and approach associated with literary modernism, to a sometimes playful postmodernism.
Like many Latin American authors, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career; over the course of his life, he has gradually moved from the political left towards the right. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted. He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990 with the center-right Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) coalition, advocating neoliberal reforms. He has subsequently supported moderate conservative candidates.