Vargas Llosa, (Jorge) Mario (Pedro) (1936– )

Peruvian novelist and politician. One of Latin America's foremost novelists, he rose to prominence in the 1960s with La ciudad y los perros/The Time of the Hero (1963) and La casa verde/The Green House (1965). His later major works include La guerra del fin del mundo/The War at the End of the World (1982) and La fiesta del chivo/The Feast of the Goat (2000). He has long been politically active, beginning on the left as a communist but later moving to the ‘neo-liberal’ right, from the 1970s. He ran unsuccessfully for Peru's presidency in 1990 but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori.

As a writer, he has written in a variety of genres (historical novels, comedies, murder mysteries, and political thrillers) and belongs to the magic realist school. His other works include Conversación en la catedra/Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), La tía Julia y el escribidor/Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), a humorously autobiographical novel, Historia de Mayta/The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1985), an account of an attempted revolution in Peru in 1958, and The Storyteller (1990).

Born in Arequipa, into a middle-class family, he was brought up by his mother and his grandfather, who was a diplomat. He went to Lima's military academy, but left before graduation to work as a journalist. He then studied law and literature at universities in Peru and Spain and moved to Paris in the early 1960s, where he wrote his early works. Since 1990 he has lived mainly in London and Spain, obtaining Spanish citizenship in 1993.