Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel laureate who passed away on Sunday at the age of 89, was the last of a celebrated group of Latin American literary figures. His works, frequently set outside of his native Peru, explored widespread issues. Vargas Llosa, who was respected for his portrayal of social realities but criticized in Latin American intellectual circles for his conservative views, was a prominent member of the "boom" generation, which also included luminaries like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar.

Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, was a firm believer in the importance of writers' involvement in civil society. He once stated, "We Latin Americans are dreamers by nature, and we have trouble telling the difference between the real world and fiction. That is why we have such good musicians, poets, painters, and writers, and also such horrible and mediocre rulers."

His support for the war in Iraq and his strong admiration for Margaret Thatcher, Britain's "Iron Lady" prime minister, however, sparked debate. Vargas Llosa, who produced a vast body of work that included historical novels, erotic romances, crime novellas, lighthearted comedies, plays, memoirs, and essays, also remained active in current events as a journalist. His style, in contrast to that of Garcia Marquez and other Latin American greats, rarely ventured into magical realism. Instead, it was distinguished by vivid descriptions of murder, rapes, and other acts of violence, possibly recalling his time as a crime reporter in Lima, Peru, when he was only 16 years old.

In an interview with AFP, he stated, "A writer must never turn into a statue. I have never liked the idea of a writer stuck in his library, cut off from the world like Proust was. I need to keep a foothold in reality. That’s why I do journalism."

Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, southern Peru, on March 28, 1936, to a single mother. As a baby, he was taken to Bolivia, and he didn't see his father until ten years later. Vargas Llosa stated in 2019 that the relationship was not a happy one because his father was "very authoritarian and severe." "I lost my innocence and discovered loneliness, authority, adult life, and fear. My salvation was reading good books, taking refuge in worlds… where I could feel free. And I became happy again."

His father enrolled him in Lima's Leoncio Prado Military Academy when he was 14 years old, an experience he called "traumatic." He found comfort in reading and writing. After graduating, he worked for the La Cronica tabloid while studying law and literature at San Marcos University during the dictatorship of Manuel Odria, where he became politically active.

Vargas Llosa married his aunt Julia Urquidi when he was 19 years old. Despite the fact that she was not a blood relative, she was a divorcee who was ten years his senior, which caused a social scandal. She supported his writing, and he began writing his first novel, "The Time of the Hero" (1963), which was based on his experiences at the military academy, after they moved to Madrid. He later finished it in Paris. His 1977 novel "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" was inspired by their ten-year marriage. For a while, he worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Radio Television Francaise in Paris. Vargas Llosa married his cousin Patricia Llosa after his marriage ended in 1964, and they had three children. The couple divorced in 2015.

All of his early novels, including "The Green House" (1966), "Conversation in the Cathedral" (1969), and "Captain Pantoja and the Special Service" (1973), are set in Peru. Later works were set in more remote locations: "The War of the End of the World" (1981) addressed a military conflict in Brazil in the late 1890s, while "The Feast of the Goat" (2000) depicted the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961. Following his Nobel Prize victory, he released "The Dream of the Celt," which tells the story of Roger Casement, a gay British consul who wrote a report in 1904 on colonialism's abuses in the Congo before becoming an Irish nationalist.

Vargas Llosa, like the majority of Latin America's intelligentsia in the early 1960s, initially backed Fidel Castro's leftist revolution before becoming disillusioned and becoming a proponent of free-market capitalism whose political hero was Thatcher. Following her resignation in 1990, Vargas Llosa wrote of his "unreserved admiration" for Thatcher, lauding her 11-year reign as "the most successful revolution in Europe this century and the one with the most powerful effect on the rest of the world."

In the same year, he ran for president of Peru as a conservative coalition candidate, but he was defeated by Alberto Fujimori, an obscure academic of Japanese descent. Vargas Llosa, disappointed by his defeat and disturbed by the dictatorial turn of Fujimori's regime, obtained Spanish citizenship in 1993, angering many Peruvians.