MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peruvian Nobel Prize winner Vargas Llosa dies aged 89

A Communist in his younger years, he became a free-trade advocate

Peruvian writer and former Presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa passed away Sunday in Lima at the age of 89, his son Álvaro announced. He wrote over 20 novels, the first one appearing in 1959. In 2010, he was awarded the Literature Nobel Prize in Literature. Vargas Llosa was also a journalist, essayist, and university professor.

“With profound sorrow, we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away today in Lima, surrounded by his family and in peace,” wrote Álvbaro on social networks.

“His passing will sadden his relatives, friends, and readers around the world, but we hope they will find solace, as we did, in the fact that he enjoyed a long, varied, and fruitful life and leaves behind a body of work that will outlive him. We will proceed in the coming hours and days according to his instructions. No public ceremony will take place,” he added.

“Our mother, our children, and we ourselves trust in having the space and privacy to bid him farewell with our family and in the company of close friends. His remains, as was his wish, will be cremated,” he also pointed out.

Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. His works include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. “We invent fictions so that we can somehow live the many lives we would like to have when we barely have a single one,” he said upon receiving his Nobel Prize.

The Swedish Academy highlighted his ability to “map the structures of power and his biting images of resistance, rebellion and individual defeat.” He was the first Spanish-speaker to receive the award in two decades.

Throughout his life, he also won numerous awards, such as the Cervantes and the Prince of Asturias Prizes.

A Communist in his younger years, he became a free-trade advocate.. He ran for president of Peru on behalf of the center-right Democratic Front coalition in 1990 and has championed Capitalism for the remainder of his life.