Birth of Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa was born on 28 March 1936 in Arequipa. A Peruvian-born novelist, essayist and political thinker, Vargas Llosa was a leading figure of the Latin American Boom. His novels, including The Time of the Hero, The Green House, Conversation in the Cathedral and The Feast of the Goat, combine experimental technique with scenes of power, violence and ordinary life. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru in 1990, after moving from leftist views to a liberal outlook. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 for his cartography of structures of power and his images of individual resistance.

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