One of our most important contemporary authors has died.
Mario Vargas Llosa was 89 years old.
He passed away in Lima.
A recipient of the Nobel Prize, he was (along with Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes) a key figure of Latin American magic realism — a huge literary movement that changed lives around the world.
These books combine imagination and fantastic elements with social realities of the region – of authoritarianism, violence, machismo.
Vargas Llosa wrote novels, essays, and plays.
Many of these were inspired by his own life – for instance, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, the amusing novel based on his marrying his own aunt at the age of 19.
Or his first novel, written when he was 15, of his experience at a Peruvian military academy.
It caused quite a ruckus, with 1000 copies burned in the yard of the school he attended.
He was also involved in politics, writing about dictators and running for presidency (he sympathised with the left in his youth and gradually began to move towards the right).
The family has opted for a private funeral.
