Artistic and Literature in Spanish
America
Mario Vargas Llosa
Dra. Patricia Nigro
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa was
born to a middle-class family in 1936, in
the Peruvian provincial city of Arequipa.
He was the only child of Ernesto Vargas
Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta (the
former a mestizo pilot, the latter the
daughter of an old criollo family), who
separated a few months before his birth.
• After Mario's birth, his father revealed
that he was having an affair with a
German woman; consequently, Mario has
two younger half-brothers: Enrique and
Ernesto Vargas.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Vargas Llosa lived with his maternal family in
Arequipa until a year after his parents'
divorce, when his maternal grandfather was
named honorary consul for Perú in Bolivia.
• With his mother and her family, Vargas Llosa
then moved to Cochabamba, where he
spent the early years of his childhood. His
maternal family, the Llosas, were sustained
by his grandfather, who managed a cotton
farm. As a child, Vargas Llosa was led to
believe that his father had died—his mother
and her family did not want to explain that
his parents had separated.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• During the government of
Peruvian President José
Bustamante y Rivero, Vargas
Llosa's maternal grandfather
obtained a diplomatic post in the
Peruvian coastal city of Piura
and the entire family returned to
Perú. While in Piura, Vargas
Llosa attended elementary
school at the religious academy
Colegio Salesiano.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• In 1946, at the age of ten, he
moved to Lima and met his father
for the first time. His parents reestablished their relationship and
lived in Magdalena del Mar, a
middle-class Lima suburb, during
his teenage years.
• While in Lima, he studied at the
Colegio La Salle, a Christian
middle school, from 1947 to 1949.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• When Vargas Llosa was 14, his father sent him to the
Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima. A year
before his graduation, Vargas Llosa began working as
an amateur journalist for local newspapers.
• He withdrew from the military academy and finished
his studies in Piura, where he worked for the local
newspaper, La Industria, and witnessed the theatrical
performance of his first dramatic work, La huida del
Inca.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• In 1953, he enrolled in Lima's National
University of San Marcos to study law
and literature.
• He married Julia Urquidi, his maternal
uncle's sister-in-law, in 1955 at the age
of 19; she was 13 years older.
• He began his literary career in 1957 with
the publication of his first short stories,
"The Leaders" ("Los jefes") while working
for two Peruvian newspapers.
• Thereafter, his stories began to appear in
Peruvian literary reviews.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Upon his graduation in 1958, he received a scholarship to study
at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain.
• In 1960, after his scholarship had expired, he moved to France
under the impression that he would receive a scholarship to
study there; however, his request was denied.
• Despite Mario and Julia's unexpected financial status, the couple
decided to remain in Paris where he began to write prolifically.
Their marriage lasted only a few more years, ending in divorce
in 1964.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• A year later, Vargas Llosa married his first cousin, Patricia
Llosa, with whom he had three children: Álvaro Vargas Llosa
(born 1966), a writer and editor; Gonzalo (born 1967), a
businessman; and Morgana (born 1974), a photographer.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Vargas Llosa’s first novel, La ciudad
y los perros (1963; “The City and
the Dogs”; Eng. trans. The Time of
the Hero), was widely acclaimed.
Translated into more than a dozen
languages, this novel, set in the
Leoncio Prado Military School,
describes adolescents striving for
survival in a hostile and violent
environment.
• The corruption of the military school
reflects the larger malaise afflicting
Perú. The book was filmed twice, in
Spanish (1985) and in Russian
(1986), the second time as Yaguar.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• The novel La casa verde (1966;
The Green House), set in the
Peruvian jungle, combines
mythical, popular, and heroic
elements to capture the sordid,
tragic, and fragmented reality of
its characters.
• Los cachorros (1967; The Cubs,
and Other Stories, filmed 1973)
is a psychoanalytical portrayal of
an adolescent who has been
accidentally castrated.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Conversación en la catedral
(1969; Conversation in the
Cathedral) deals with Manuel
Odría’s regime (1948–56).
• The novel Pantaleón y las
visitadoras (1973; “Pantaleón
and the Visitors”; Eng. trans.
Captain Pantoja and the Special
Service, filmed 2000) is a satire
of the Peruvian military and
religious fanaticism.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• His semiautobiographical novel La
tía Julia y el escribidor (1977;
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,
filmed 1990 as Tune in Tomorrow)
combines two distinct narrative
points of view to provide a
contrapuntal effect.
• Vargas Llosa also wrote a critical
study of the fiction of Gabriel
García Márquez in García
Márquez: Historia de un
deicidio (1971); “García
Márquez: Story of a God-Killer”).
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• After living three years in London, he
was a writer-in-residence at
Washington State University in
1969.
• In 1970, he settled in Barcelona. He
lectured and taught widely throughout
the world.
• His critical essays in English
translation were published in 1978. La
guerra del fin del mundo (1981;
The War of the End of the World), an
account of the 19th-century political
conflicts in Brazil, became a best
seller.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Three of his plays— La
señorita de Tacna (1981;
The Young Lady of Tacna),
Kathie y el hipopótamo
(1983; Kathie and the
Hippopotamus), and La
chunga (1986; “The Jest”;
Eng. trans. La chunga)—
were published in Three
Plays (1990).
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Like many Latin American authors, Vargas
Llosa has been politically active
throughout his career; over the course of
his life, he has gradually moved from the
political left towards the right.
• While he initially supported the Cuban
revolutionary government of Fidel Castro,
he later became disenchanted.
• He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990
with the center-right Frente
Democrático (FREDEMO) coalition,
advocating neoliberal reforms.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• In 1990, he lost his bid for the
presidency of Perú in a runoff
against Alberto Fujimori, an
agricultural engineer and the
son of Japanese immigrants.
• Vargas Llosa wrote about this
experience in El pez en el agua:
memorias (1993; A Fish in the
Water: A Memoir).
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• He has subsequently supported
moderate conservative
candidates.
• He became a citizen of Spain in
1993 and was awarded the
Cervantes Prize in 1994.
Despite his new nationality, he
continued to write about Perú in
such novels as Los cuadernos
de don Rigoberto (1997; The
Notebooks of Don Rigoberto).
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• His later works include the novels
La fiesta del chivo (2000; The
Feast of the Goat), El paraíso
en la otra esquina (2003; The
Way to Paradise), 2006 –
Travesuras de la niña mala
(The Bad Girl, 2007).
• Other non fiction works are 2004
– La tentación de lo imposible
(The Temptation of the
Impossible); 2009 – El Viaje a
la Ficción (A trip to fiction).
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)
• Many of Vargas Llosa's works are influenced by the writer's perception
of Peruvian society and his own experiences as a native Peruvian.
Increasingly, he has expanded his range, and tackled themes that
arise from other parts of the world. Another change over his career
has been a shift from a style and approach associated with literary
modernism to a sometimes playful postmodernism.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936)
• Mario Vargas Llosa is considered a
major Latin American writer,
alongside other greats such as
Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis
Borges, Gabriel García
Márquez and Carlos Fuentes.
In his book The New Novel in
Latin America (La Nueva Novela),
Fuentes offers an in-depth literary
criticism of the positive influence
Vargas Llosa's work has had on
Latin American literature.
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936)
• Mario Vargas Llosa won the
Nobel Prize in Literature in
2010.
• He very well deserved it
because of his wonderful and
huge work as a writer.
• His last novel is El sueño del
celta (2010) (The dream of the
celt).
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936)
• Mario Vargas Llosa has been working
as a journalist since he was a
teenager.
• Now he writes for important
newspapers as The New York Times
or El País (Spain).
• Several books collect his articles and
interviews such as
• Diario de Irak (A Journal of Irak,
2003); Israel-Palestina. Paz o Guerra
Santa (2006); Sables y utopías
(2009).