Who was Mario Vargas LLosa? Nobel Prize winning Peruvian writer and politician dies at 89
"It is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas LLosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today,” Mario Vargas LLosa's son has announced.
Nobel Prize winning Peruvian writer and politician Mario Vargas LLosa has died, his son Alvaro Vasgas Llosa revealed on X. He was 89.
It is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas LLosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,” Alvaro wrote. “His departure will sadden his relatives, his friends and his readers around the world, but we hope they will find comfort, as we do, in the fact that he enjoyed a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leaves behind him a body of work that outlive him.”
He added, “We will proceed in the coming hours and days in accordance with his instructions. No public ceremony will take place. Our mother, our children and ourselves trust that we will have the space and privacy to bid him farewell in the company of family members and close friends. As was his will, his remains will be cremated.”
Llosa’s cause of death was not revealed.
Who was Mario Vargas LLosa?
Llosa was born into a middle-class family in Arequipa, Peru, according to nobelprize.org. He was the only child of Ernesto Vargas Maldonado, a radio operator, and Dora Llosa Ureta, the daughter of an old criollo family.
After his parents divorced, the young boy grew up with his mother and maternal grandparents in Bolivia. There, his grandfather worked as a consular officer.
Llosa’s interest in poetry developed at an early age. Even though his father enrolled him in a military academy, he went on to follow his instincts in literature and become a writer. He was politically active too, and ran as a candidate in the Peruvian presidential election of 1990.
Llosa’s works comprise novels, plays, essays, literary criticisms, and journalism. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat” back in 2010. He also won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award, the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes International Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. He was elected to the Académie française in 2021.
Some of Llosa’s best known novels include The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the famous Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). His books covered a variety of genres, including comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Some of his books were adapted as feature films, including Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982).
Llosa married Julia Urquidi, his maternal uncle's sister-in-law, in 1955, when he was 19. Urquidi was 10 years older than him. The couple divorced in 1964, and Llosa married his first cousin, Patricia Llosa, a year later. Patricia and Llosa share three children – Alvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana. The pair separated in 2015, and eventually divorced.
Famous quotes by Mario Vargas LLosa
Llosa was known for some great quotes. Here is a look at 10:
- “Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...”
- “One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.”
- “Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”
- “Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.”
- “I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.”
- “In my case, literature is a kind of revenge. It's something that gives me what real life can't give me - all the adventures, all the suffering. All the experiences I can only live in the imagination, literature completes.”
- “But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.”
- “You cannot teach creativity—how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.”
- “The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.”
- “No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.”
