The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa

Hispano-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who was awarded the Nobel Prize on Thursday for literature, has emerged over the years as one of the great names of world literature, author of a work of inspiration historical narrative innovative shapes. Already a winner, among other awards, the Cervantes Prize, the most important literary award in Spanish, he is the author of thirty books (essays, novels, drama) translated worldwide.

This former journalist and teacher was the candidate of a coalition of center-right to the presidency of Peru in 1990, defeated by Alberto Fujimori. Born in Arequipa (Southern Peru), March 28, 1936, he was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in Cochabamba (Bolivia) and Peru. After studying in Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Lima. With a scholarship, he studied and obtained a doctorate in Madrid. He then moved to Paris where, married his aunt Julia Urquidi, 15 years his senior, he held various professions: translator, a Spanish teacher, a journalist with Agence France-Presse.

In 1959 he published his first collection of short stories The big shots. But it is with the novel The City and the dogs that his literary career took off in 1963. Three years later, he consolidated his reputation with The Green House. Seduced by Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution, he went to Havana he left to return to Europe with a new wife, Patricia. In 1971, the author broke publicly with the Castro revolution and the movements of the extreme left and became a sharp critic of the "lider maxim. The prestigious literary Vargas Llosa has since strengthened in 1969 with the release of his documentary novel Conversation in the Cathedral.

Following other successes like the Visitors and Pantaleon (1973), a satire of military fanaticism, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), inspired by his first marriage, The War of the End of the World (1982) referring to the Brazilian political, Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1986) on political violence in Peru, and Fish in Water (1993), autobiographical narrative, or praise of the stepmother, the goat and Day Tours and detours of the ugly girl. A close friendship will bind for several years to the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, remained close to Castro, but it ends abruptly in an incident that none of the protagonists has said. He had obtained Spanish citizenship in 1993.

(Source AFP)