Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa graduated in Literature and Law at the University of San Marcos in Lima, and received his PhD in Romance Philology from Madrid's Complutense University.

In 1959 he first became known for a book of short stories, The Leaders (Leopoldo Alas Prize), but The Time of the Hero (1963, Biblioteca Breve Prize and Spanish Critics' Prize) was the work that made him famous. Further novels were: The Green House (1966, Spanish Critics' Prize and Rómulo Gallegos Prize), Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), Captain Pantoja and the Special Services (1973), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1984), Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1986), The Storyteller (1987), Death in the Andes (1993, Planeta Prize), The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997), The Feast of the Goat (2000) and The Way to Paradise (2003).

He has also published several plays, including The Young Lady from Tacna (1981), La Chunga (1986) and El loco de los balcones (1993); essays, such as García Márquez: historia de un deicidio (1971) and The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and "Madame Bovary" (1975), and his memoirs titled A Fish in the Water (1993), in which he narrates his political experience as a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Peru.

In 1986 he won the Prince de Asturias Prize for Literature and in 1994 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize for Literature. He is a member of the Spanish Royal Language Academy and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Queen Mary College, the University of London, the University of Boston and the University of Harvard. In 2010 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.