The latest giant in Latin American literature has gone: the Nobel Histo-Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa Nobel Prize died on Sunday in Lima at the age of 89. “It is with deep sadness, that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, died today in Lima, surrounded by his family and in peace,” said his son Alvaro in a message also signed by his brother Gonzalo and his sister Morgana.
Born on March 28, 1936 in a family in the Peruvian middle class, Mario Vargas Llosa was one of the great protagonists of the Latin-American literary “boom” of the 1960s and 1970s, with the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Argentin Julio Cortazar.
The family did not specify the time or the causes of his death, but the health of the writer was fragile since his return to the Peruvian capital in 2024, after his departure from Madrid. For the past few months, he had lived back from public life.
Presidential tributes
Outside the writer’s house, facing the Pacific Ocean, in the Bohème district of Barranco, a small group of people gathered in silence at the announcement of his death, holding copies of his works in hand. “No public ceremony will take place,” said the writer’s family, who also said that his body would be cremated. “We will carry out in the hours and days to come in accordance with her instructions,” she said.
In a message published on X, the president of Peru Dina Boluarte regretted the death of the writer. “His intellectual genius and his vast work will remain a lasting heritage for future generations. “The president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, described on X the writer of” great columnist of Hispanic America and a perceptive interpreter of his paths and his destinies “.
“Mario Vargas Llosa died, a master of the masters. He leaves us his work, his admiration and his example. He leaves us a way to follow for the future, ”reacted the former Colombian president Alvaro Uibe on the same network. The Peruvian writer Alfredo Bryce Echenic, author of “a world for Julius” and friend of Mario Vargas Llosa, estimated that his death constituted “a mourning for Peru because no one has represented us in the world as much as him, with his work in general, his tenacity, his purity and his immensity”.
Failing health
A few days before his 89th birthday, Mario Vargas Llosa appeared in a series of three photos taken in places where he wrote his novels “Aux Five Rues, Lima” (2016) and “Le Dedico Mi Silencio” (2023). It was not the first time that his son shared photos of him in places in the capital who had inspired him to write some of his emblematic works.
The health of Vargas Llosa had deteriorated considerably from 2023, after being hospitalized in June due to an infection in COVID-19, while he lived in Spain, a country of which he had obtained nationality in 1993. Admired for his description of social realities, the author of masterpieces as “the city and dogs” or “conversation in the cathedral” was also criticized by South American intellectual circles for its conservative positions.
Translated into around thirty languages, this Francophile author, who lived in Paris for several years, was the first foreign writer to enter the prestigious collection of the Pléiade in 2016. He was elected to the French Academy in 2021.
