Vargas Llosa, Mario (mär`yō vär`gäs yō`sä), 1936–, Peruvian novelist and politician. Although his works contain much external realism emphasizing the ugly and grotesque, he also often explores the minds of his characters, overcoming barriers of time and space. In his fiction, Vargas Llosa paints a portrait of Peruvian society that is both severe and tender. His novels include The Time of the Hero (1962; tr. 1966), The Green House (1966; tr. 1968), Conversation in the Cathedral (1969; tr. 1975), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977; tr. 1982), The War of the End of the World (1981; tr. 1982), Death in the Andes (1993; tr. 1996), The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997, tr. 1998), and The Feast of the Goat (2000, tr. 2001). He is also the author of criticism, including The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary (1975; tr. 1986) and Writer's Reality (1991), and essays, such as those in Making Waves (1996). Vargas Llosa was an unsuccessful candidate for Peruvian president in 1990; he described the vagaries of his campaign in A Fish in the Water: A Memoir (1993, tr. 1994).

Bibliography

See studies by S. Castro-Klaren and R. A. Kerr (both: 1990); collection of critical essays ed. by C. Rossman and A. Friedman (1978).

Vargas Llosa, (Jorge) Mario (Pedro)

Mario Vargas Llosa, c. 1990.

(credit: Rue des Archives/The Granger Collection, New York)

(born March 28, 1936, Arequipa, Peru) Peruvian writer. Vargas Llosa worked as a journalist and broadcaster before publishing The Time of the Hero (1963), his widely acclaimed first novel. It describes adolescents striving for survival in the hostile environment of a military school, the corruption of which reflects the larger malaise afflicting Peru. His commitment to social change is evident in his early novels, essays, and plays. He turned increasingly conservative, especially in the face of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, and in 1990 he ran for president of Peru. His best-known works include The Green House (1965), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), and The War of the End of the World (1981), an account of a 19th-century Brazilian religious movement. In 1994 he won the Cervantes Prize (a prestigious literary award given for Spanish-language literature).