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Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian Author and Nobel Literature Laureate, Dies at 89

He was author of such celebrated novels as 'The Time of the Hero' (La Ciudad y los Perros) and 'Feast of the Goat.'

That, and subsequent novels such as Conversation in the Cathedral, ( Conversación en la Catedral) in 1969, quickly established Vargas Llosa as one of the leaders of the so-called “Boom,” or new wave of Latin American writers of the 1960s and 1970s, alongside Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. In a famous incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched fellow Nobel Prize winner and ex-friend García Márquez, whom he later ridiculed as “Castro’s courtesan.” It was never clear whether the fight was over politics or a personal dispute, as neither writer ever wanted to discuss it publicly. Vargas Llosa also used his literary talents to write several successful novels about the lives of real people, including French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin and his grandmother, Flora Tristan, in The Way to Paradise in 2003 and 19th-century Irish nationalist and diplomat Sir Roger Casement in The Dream of the Celt in 2010.

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