Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, the second city of Peru, in March 1936. He began writing as a journalist when he was still a student at high school, contributing to "La Crónica" and "La Industria". Although he had already written a play beforehand, in 1957 he began to publish short stories in some magazines: "Los jefes" appeared in the "Mercurio Peruano" and "El abuelo" in "El Comercio".

In 1958 he travelled to Paris, thanks to a prize won in a short story competition, and on his return to Lima he completed his higher education and received a grant to transfer to the University of Madrid. A few months after arriving in the capital of Spain, he left his studies for the doctorate and settled in Paris, where he was to stay for seven years.

In 1963 he published his first great novel, "La ciudad y los perros", with which he won several literary prizes, among them the "Biblioteca Breve" and "La Crítica". It has currently been translated into more than twenty languages. His second major work was to be "La Casa Verde", published in 1966, the same year he moved to London, where he would teach at the university and contribute frequently to newspapers and magazines.

After writing one of his fundamental novels, "Conversación en la catedral", Vargas Llosa travelled to Barcelona in 1970, where he was to stay for almost five years until in 1974 he put an end to his European exile and returned to Peru with the intention, for the first time, of settling down there.

By 1973, his novel "Pantaleón y las visitadoras", which was adapted for the cinema two years later, had come out. In 1975 he began a series of projects related with the cinema and in March of that year he was elected as numerary member of the Peruvian Academy of the Spanish Language. Two months later, he was appointed as president of Pen Club International, a post which he would hold until 1979.

Vargas Llosa began his political activity in 1987, due to the nationalization of the financial system in Peru. As candidate for the presidency of his country in 1989 with the centre-right coalition Frente Democrático, he was finally defeated in the ballot by Alberto Fujimori.

Apart from the works mentioned above, the following works may be highlighted among the output of Mario Vargas Llosa: the novels "La tía Julia y el escribidor" (1977), "La guerra del fin del mundo" (1981), "Historia de Mayta" (1984), "¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero?" (1986), "El hablador" (1987) and "Elogio de la madrastra" (1988); in his facet as a playwright he has written "La señorita de Tacna" (1981), "Kathie y el hipopótamo" (1984) and "La Chunga" (1986) and as an essayist he has published important works such as "García Márquez: historia de un deicidio" (1971) and "La orgía perpetua: Flaubert y Madame Bovary" (1975).

Among other distinctions, he has received the "Ramón Godoy Lallana" Journalism Prize, the Literary Prize of the Italo-American Institute, the "Pablo Iglesias" Literature Prize, the "Hemingway" Prize, the Gold Medal of the Americas and the Max Schmidheiny Foundation Liberty Prize.

Already a classic due to the scope and quality of his work, he is one of the Spanish-American writers who has most consistently and determinedly brought the resources of the 20th century literary avant-garde into our language.