About Mario Vargas Llosa

Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist. A leading writer of his generation and one of Latin America’s most significant novelists and essayists, Vargas Llosa writes across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. He has lectured and taught at universities in the United States, South America, and Europe.

Vargas Llosa is the author of more than 30 works of nonfiction, plays, and novels, including: The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros), The Green House (La casa verde), Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la cathedral), and The War of the End of the World (La guerra del fin del mundo). In 1995, he was awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious and remunerative award given for Spanish-language literature. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 and in the same year received the Degree of Letters from the City College of New York, where he also delivered the President’s Lecture. His works have been translated into more than 45 languages.

In 1976 Vargas Llosa was elected President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers and oldest human rights organization, and in 1977 he was elected as a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language. Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career, running for the Peruvian presidency in 1990. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was raised into the Spanish nobility by King Juan Carlos I with the hereditary title of Marqués de Vargas Llosa. In 2012 he was named one of the “10 Most Influential Ibero American Intellectuals” of the year by Foreign Policy magazine, and received the Carlos Fuentes International Prize for Literary Creation in the Spanish Language.