v.
born March 28, 1936, Arequipa, Peru
Peruvian writer.
Vargas Llosa worked as a journalist and broadcaster before publishing The Time of the Hero (1963), his widely acclaimed first novel. It describes adolescents striving for survival in the hostile environment of a military school, the corruption of which reflects the larger malaise afflicting Peru. His commitment to social change is evident in his early novels, essays, and plays. He turned increasingly conservative, especially in the face of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, and in 1990 he ran for president of Peru. His best-known works include The Green House (1965), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), and The War of the End of the World (1981), an account of a 19th-century Brazilian religious movement. In 1994 he won the Cervantes Prize (a prestigious literary award given for Spanish-language literature).