Issue date: 03 Oct, 2011

PERSONAJES

CONSULT RATES

PERSONAJES

HISTORY

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Prize in Literature 2010, is internationally acknowledged as one of the most significant contemporary writers in Spanish. He was born in 1936 in Arequipa (Peru) and obtained the Spanish citizenship in 1993 due to his life-long bonds with Spain and the existing dual nationality agreement with Peru. All his life has been marked by his vocation as a writer which began as a journalist for several newspapers in his native country. He was born to a wealthy family, studied law and literature at the University of San Marcos, Lima, and later conducted doctorate studies at the University Complutense of Madrid. In 1960 he moved to Paris. He has also lived in London, Barcelona and Madrid, places where he has spent most of his extensive literary life.

He has written across an array of literary genres; essays, journalism, literary criticism, short stories and novels. Vargas Llosa belongs to a generation of American writers that marked an era. He is committed to the defence of human rights and democratic values and in his work addresses the social realism of Latin American literature. His first novel, La ciudad y los perros (1962) gained wide public attention and immediate success, and was followed by a long list of titles; The Green House, Conversation in the Cathedral, Death in the Andes and The War of the End of the World among others. A number of Vargas Llosa's works have been adapted for the screen including Captain Pantoja and the Special Service and The Feast of the Goat In his autobiographical memoir, entitled The fish in the water, (1993), he confesses his literary vocation as a child.

In 1994 he was elected a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Among his many awards are the Premio Cervantes and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He is a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language, a professor at Cambridge University and Doctor Honoris Causa of several universities in America, Europe and Asia, in which he has delivered numerous speeches and lectures in defence and recognition of the Spanish language.