Mario Vargas Llosa

Vargas Llosa's first novel, The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros), was published in 1963. The book is set among a community of cadets in a Lima military school, and the plot is based on the author's own experiences at Lima's Leoncio Prado Military Academy.[26] This early piece gained wide public attention and immediate success.[27] Its vitality and adept use of sophisticated literary techniques immediately impressed critics,[28] and it won the Premio de la Crítica Española award.[27] Nevertheless, its sharp criticism of the Peruvian military establishment led to controversy in Peru. Several Peruvian generals attacked the novel, claiming that it was the work of a "degenerate mind" and stating that Vargas Llosa was "paid by Ecuador" to undermine the prestige of the Peruvian Army.[27]

In 1965, Vargas Llosa published his second novel, The Green House (La casa verde), about a brothel called "The Green House" and how its quasi-mythical presence affects the lives of the characters. The main plot follows Bonifacia, a girl who is about to receive the vows of the church, and her transformation into la Selvatica, the best-known prostitute of "The Green House". The novel was immediately acclaimed, confirming Vargas Llosa as an important voice of Latin American narrative.[29] The Green House won the first edition of the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize in 1967, contending with works by veteran Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti and by Gabriel García Márquez.[30] This novel alone accumulated enough awards to place the author among the leading figures of the Latin American Boom.[31] Some critics still consider The Green House to be Vargas Llosa's finest and most important achievement.[31] Indeed, Latin American literary critic Gerald Martin suggests that The Green House is "one of the greatest novels to have emerged from Latin America".[31]

Vargas Llosa's third novel, Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral), was published in 1969, when he was 33. This ambitious narrative is the story of Santiago Zavala, the son of a government minister, and Ambrosio, his chauffeur.[32] A random meeting at a dog pound leads the pair to a riveting conversation at a nearby bar known as "The Cathedral".[33] During the encounter, Zavala searches for the truth about his father's role in the murder of a notorious Peruvian underworld figure, shedding light on the workings of a dictatorship along the way.[34] Unfortunately for Zavala, his quest results in a dead end with no answers and no sign of a better future.[35] The novel attacks the dictatorial government of Odría by showing how a dictatorship controls and destroys lives.[27] The persistent theme of hopelessness makes Conversation in the Cathedral Vargas Llosa's most bitter novel.[35]

He lectured on Spanish American Literature at King's College London from 1969 to 1970.[36]

In 1971, Vargas Llosa published García Márquez: Story of a Deicide (García Márquez: historia de un deicidio), which was his doctoral thesis for the Complutense University of Madrid.[37][38] Although Vargas Llosa wrote this book-length study about his then friend, the Colombian Nobel laureate writer Gabriel García Márquez, they did not speak to each other again. In 1976, Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez in the face in Mexico City at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, ending the friendship.[39] Neither writer had publicly stated the underlying reasons for the quarrel.[40] A photograph of García Márquez sporting a black eye was published in 2007, reigniting public interest in the feud.[41] Despite the decades of silence, in 2007, Vargas Llosa agreed to allow part of his book to be used as the introduction to a 40th-anniversary edition of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was re-released in Spain and throughout Latin America that year.[42] Historia de un Deicidio was also reissued in that year, as part of Vargas Llosa's complete works.

Following the monumental work Conversation in the Cathedral, Vargas Llosa's output shifted away from more serious themes such as politics and problems with society. Latin American literary scholar Raymond L. Williams describes this phase in his writing career as "the discovery of humor".[43] His first attempt at a satirical novel was Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (Pantaleón y las visitadoras), published in 1973.[44] This short, comic novel offers vignettes of dialogues and documents about the Peruvian armed forces and a corps of prostitutes assigned to visit military outposts in remote jungle areas.[45] These plot elements are similar to Vargas Llosa's earlier novel The Green House, but in a different form. Captain Pantoja and the Special Service is, therefore, essentially a parody of both The Green House and the literary approach that novel represents.[45] Vargas Llosa's motivation to write the novel came from actually witnessing prostitutes being hired by the Peruvian Army and brought to serve soldiers in the jungle.[46]

From 1974 to 1987, Vargas Llosa focused on his writing, but also took the time to pursue other endeavors.[47] In 1975, he co-directed an unsuccessful motion-picture adaptation of his novel, Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service.[47] In 1976 he was elected President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers and oldest human rights organisation, a position he held until 1979.[47] During this time, Vargas Llosa constantly traveled to speak at conferences organized by international institutions such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Cambridge, where he was Simón Bolívar Professor and an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College in 1977–78.[48][49][50]

In 1977, Vargas Llosa was elected as a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language, a membership he still holds today. That year, he also published Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (La tía Julia y el escribidor), based in part on his marriage to his first wife, Julia Urquidi, to whom he dedicated the novel.[51] She later wrote a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo (What Little Vargas Didn't Say), in which she gives her personal account of their relationship. She states that Vargas Llosa's account exaggerates many negative points in their courtship and marriage while minimizing her role of assisting his literary career.[52] Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is considered one of the most striking examples of how the language and imagery of popular culture can be used in literature.[53] The novel was adapted in 1990 into a Hollywood feature film, Tune in Tomorrow.

Vargas Llosa in 1982

Vargas Llosa's fourth major novel, The War of the End of the World (La guerra del fin del mundo), was published in 1981 and was his first attempt at a historical novel.[54] This work initiated a radical change in Vargas Llosa's style towards themes such as messianism and irrational human behaviour.[55] It recreates the War of Canudos, an incident in 19th-century Brazil in which an armed millenarian cult held off a siege by the national army for months.[56] As in Vargas Llosa's earliest work, this novel carries a sober and serious theme, and its tone is dark.[56] Vargas Llosa's bold exploration of humanity's propensity to idealize violence, and his account of a man-made catastrophe brought on by fanaticism on all sides, earned the novel substantial recognition.[57] Because of the book's ambition and execution, critics have argued that this is one of Vargas Llosa's greatest literary pieces.[57] Even though the novel has been acclaimed in Brazil, it was initially poorly received because a foreigner was writing about a Brazilian theme.[58] The book was also criticized as revolutionary and anti-socialist.[59] Vargas Llosa says that this book is his favorite and was his most difficult accomplishment.[59]

After completing The War of the End of the World, Vargas Llosa began to write novels that were significantly shorter than many of his earlier books. In 1983, he finished The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (Historia de Mayta, 1984).[54] The novel focuses on a leftist insurrection that took place on 29 May 1962, in the Andean city of Jauja.[54] Later the same year, during the Sendero Luminoso uprising, Vargas Llosa was asked by the Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry to join the Investigatory Commission, a task force to inquire into the massacre of eight journalists at the hands of the villagers of Uchuraccay.[60] The commission's main purpose was to investigate the murders in order to provide information regarding the incident to the public.[61] Following his involvement with the Investigatory Commission, Vargas Llosa published a series of articles to defend his position in the affair.[61] In 1986, he completed his next novel, Who Killed Palomino Molero (¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero?), which he began writing shortly after the end of the Uchuraccay investigation.[61] Though the plot of this mystery novel is similar to the tragic events at Uchuraccay, literary critic Roy Boland points out that it was not an attempt to reconstruct the murders, but rather a "literary exorcism" of Vargas Llosa's own experiences during the commission.[62] The experience also inspired one of Vargas Llosa's later novels, Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes), originally published in 1993 in Barcelona.[63]

It was almost 20 years before Vargas Llosa wrote another major work: The Feast of the Goat (La fiesta del chivo), a political thriller, was published in 2000 (and in English in 2001). According to Williams, it is Vargas Llosa's most complete and most ambitious novel since The War of the End of the World.[64] Critic Sabine Koellmann sees it in the line of his earlier novels such as "Conversación en la catedral" depicting the effects of authoritarianism, violence and the abuse of power on the individual.[65] Based on the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who governed the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, the novel has three main strands: one concerns Urania Cabral, the daughter of a former politician and Trujillo loyalist, who returns for the first time since leaving the Dominican Republic after Trujillo's assassination 30 years earlier; the second concentrates on the assassination itself, the conspirators who carry it out, and its consequences; and the third and final strand deals with Trujillo himself in scenes from the end of his regime.[64] The book quickly received positive reviews in Spain and Latin America,[66] and has had a significant impact in Latin America, being regarded as one of Vargas Llosa's best works.[64]

In 1995, he wrote and published a children's book called Hitos y Mitos Literarios ("The Milestones and the Stories of Greatest Literary Works"), illustrated by Willi Glasauer. The book includes fun facts, trivia, and information accompanied by photos and Willi Glasauer's illustrations of the likes of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Herzog by Saul Bellow, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

In 2003 he wrote The Way to Paradise in which he studies Flora Tristan and Paul Gauguin.

In 2006, Vargas Llosa wrote The Bad Girl (Travesuras de la niña mala), which journalist Kathryn Harrison argues is a rewrite (rather than simply a recycling) of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856).[67] In Vargas Llosa's version, the plot relates the decades-long obsession of its narrator, a Peruvian expatriate in Paris, with a woman with whom he first fell in love when both were teenagers.

In 2019 he published the novel Tiempos recios (Fierce times ), about the 1954 coup in Guatemala.[68]

Like many other Latin American intellectuals, Vargas Llosa was initially a supporter of the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro.[29] He studied Marxism in depth as a university student and was later persuaded by communist ideals after the success of the Cuban Revolution.[69] Gradually, Vargas Llosa came to believe that socialism was incompatible with what he considered to be general liberties and freedoms.[70] The official rupture between the writer and the policies of the Cuban government occurred with the so-called 'Padilla Affair', when the Castro regime imprisoned the poet Heberto Padilla for a month in 1971.[71] Vargas Llosa, along with other intellectuals of the time, wrote to Castro protesting the Cuban political system and its imprisonment of the artist.[72] Vargas Llosa has identified himself with liberalism rather than extreme left-wing political ideologies ever since.[73] Since he relinquished his earlier leftism, he has opposed both left- and right-wing authoritarian regimes.[74]

Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato (left) with Mario Vargas Llosa (right) in 1981

With his appointment to the Investigatory Commission on the Uchuraccay massacre in 1983, he experienced what literary critic Jean Franco calls "the most uncomfortable event in [his] political career".[63] Unfortunately for Vargas Llosa, his involvement with the Investigatory Commission led to immediate negative reactions and defamation from the Peruvian press; many suggested that the massacre was a conspiracy to keep the journalists from reporting the presence of government paramilitary forces in Uchuraccay.[61] The commission concluded that it was the indigenous villagers who had been responsible for the killings; for Vargas Llosa the incident showed "how vulnerable democracy is in Latin America and how easily it dies under dictatorships of the right and left".[75] These conclusions, and Vargas Llosa personally, came under intense criticism: anthropologist Enrique Mayer, for instance, accused him of "paternalism",[76] while fellow anthropologist Carlos Iván Degregori criticized him for his ignorance of the Andean world.[77] Vargas Llosa was accused of actively colluding in a government cover-up of army involvement in the massacre.[61] American Latin American literature scholar Misha Kokotovic summarizes that the novelist was charged with seeing "indigenous cultures as a 'primitive' obstacle to the full realization of his Western model of modernity".[78] Shocked both by the atrocity itself and then by the reaction his report had provoked, Vargas Llosa responded that his critics were apparently more concerned with his report than with the hundreds of peasants who later died at the hands of the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla organization.[79]

In 1987, he helped form and soon became a leader of the center-right party Movimiento Libertad.[80] The following year his party entered a coalition with the parties of Peru's two principal conservative politicians at the time, ex-president Fernando Belaúnde Terry (of the Popular Action party) and Luis Bedoya Reyes (of the Partido Popular Cristiano), to form the tripartite center-right coalition known as Frente Democrático (FREDEMO).[80] He ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990 as the candidate of the FREDEMO coalition with the support of the United States.[81] He proposed neoliberal policies similar to Fujimori that included a drastic economic austerity program that frightened most of the country's poor; this program emphasized the need for privatization, a market economy, free trade, and most importantly, the dissemination of private property.[82][83] Although he won the first round with 34% of the vote, Vargas Llosa was defeated by a then-unknown agricultural engineer, Alberto Fujimori, in the subsequent run-off.[83] Vargas Llosa included an account of his run for the presidency in the memoir A Fish in the Water (El pez en el agua, 1993).[84] Since his political defeat, he has focused mainly on his writing, with only occasional political involvement.[85]

A month after losing the election, at the invitation of Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa attended a conference in Mexico entitled, "The 20th Century: The Experience of Freedom". Focused on the collapse of communist rule in central and eastern Europe, it was broadcast on Mexican television from 27 August to 2 September. Addressing the conference on 30 August 1990, Vargas Llosa embarrassed his hosts by condemning the Mexican system of power based on the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had been in power for 61 years. Criticizing the PRI by name, he commented, "I don't believe that there has been in Latin America any case of a system of dictatorship which has so efficiently recruited the intellectual milieu, bribing it with great subtlety." He declared, "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship. The perfect dictatorship is not communism, not the USSR, not Fidel Castro; the perfect dictatorship is Mexico. Because it is a camouflaged dictatorship."[7][86] The statement, "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship" became a cliché in Mexico[87] and internationally, until the PRI fell from power in 2000.

He has been involved in the Spain's political arena. In February 2008 he stopped supporting the People's Party in favor of the recently created Union, Progress and Democracy, claiming that certain conservative views held by the former party are at odds with his classical liberal beliefs. His political ideologies appear in the book Política razonable, written with Fernando Savater, Rosa Díez, Álvaro Pombo, Albert Boadella and Carlos Martínez Gorriarán.[96] He continues to write, both journalism and fiction, and to travel extensively. He has also taught as a visiting professor at a number of prominent universities.[97]

In April 2011, the writer took part in the 2011 Peruvian general election by saying he was going to vote for Alejandro Toledo (Peruvian former president 2001–2006). After casting his vote, he said his country should stay in the path of legality and freedom.[98][99]

Vargas Llosa is opposed to Catalan independence from Spain. Attending an anti-independence rally in October 2017, he said: "Spanish democracy is here to stay. No separatist conspiracy can destroy it."[100] In 2021 he attended a rally against the pardon of the Catalan independence leaders in Madrid.[101][102]

Since her introduction into politics, Vargas Llosa has had a complex opinion on far-right politician Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the authoritarian president of Peru Alberto Fujimori. During her candidacy in the 2011 Peruvian general election, Vargas Llosa said "the worst option is that of Keiko Fujimori because it means the legitimation of one of the worst dictatorships that Peru has had in its history".[103] After Fujimori announced her candidacy for the 2016 Peruvian general election, Vargas Llosa said in 2014 "Keiko is the daughter of a murderer and a thief who is imprisoned, tried by civil courts with international observers, sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder and theft. I do not want her to win the elections".[104] However, in the second round of the 2021 Peruvian general election, Vargas Llosa expressed support for Keiko, sharing opposition to far-left candidate Pedro Castillo and describing Fujimori as the "lesser of two evils".[105][106][107]

During the 2021 Chilean general elections, Vargas Llosa expressed support for José Antonio Kast, the far-right candidate for president who defended the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.[108]

Vargas Llosa was named in both the Panama Papers (2016) and Pandora Papers (2021) released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.[109] According to IDL-Reporteros, the British Virgin Islands company Melek Investing Inc. was documented to be owned by Vargas Llosa was used for book royalty profits and the sale of real estate in London and Madrid.[109] Following the Panama Papers leak in 2016, Carmen Balcells said on behalf of Vargas Llosa that investments were made "without the consent of Messrs. Vargas Llosa" while in the 2021 Pandora Papers leaks, Javier Martín, a representative of Vargas Llosa, said the writer "was not aware of the ownership of that company".[109] IDL-Reporteros provided a document showing Vargas Llosa's signature on a "Consent to Act as Director" form for Melek Investing Inc. as part of the 2021 leak.[109]

Vargas Llosa's style encompasses historical material as well as his own personal experiences.[110] For example, in his first novel, The Time of the Hero, his own experiences at the Leoncio Prado military school informed his depiction of the corrupt social institution which mocked the moral standards it was supposed to uphold.[26] Furthermore, the corruption of the book's school is a reflection of the corruption of Peruvian society at the time the novel was written.[28] Vargas Llosa frequently uses his writing to challenge the inadequacies of society, such as demoralization and oppression by those in political power towards those who challenge this power. One of the main themes he has explored in his writing is the individual's struggle for freedom within an oppressive reality.[111] For example, his two-volume novel Conversation in the Cathedral is based on the tyrannical dictatorship of Peruvian President Manuel A. Odría.[112] The protagonist, Santiago, rebels against the suffocating dictatorship by participating in the subversive activities of leftist political groups.[113] In addition to themes such as corruption and oppression, Vargas Llosa's second novel, The Green House, explores "a denunciation of Peru's basic institutions", dealing with issues of abuse and exploitation of the workers in the brothel by corrupt military officers.[43]

Many of Vargas Llosa's earlier novels were set in Peru, while in more recent work he has expanded to other regions of Latin America, such as Brazil and the Dominican Republic.[114] His responsibilities as a writer and lecturer have allowed him to travel frequently and led to settings for his novels in regions outside of Peru.[47] The War of the End of the World was his first major work set outside Peru.[27] Though the plot deals with historical events of the Canudos revolt against the Brazilian government, the novel is not based directly on historical fact; rather, its main inspiration is the non-fiction account of those events published by Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha in 1902.[56] The Feast of the Goat, based on the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, takes place in the Dominican Republic;[64] in preparation for this novel, Vargas Llosa undertook a comprehensive study of Dominican history.[115] The novel was characteristically realist, and Vargas Llosa underscores that he "respected the basic facts, ... I have not exaggerated", but at the same time he points out "It's a novel, not a history book, so I took many, many liberties."[116]

One of Vargas Llosa's more recent novels, The Way to Paradise (El paraíso en la otra esquina), is set largely in France and Tahiti.[117] Based on the biography of former social reformer Flora Tristan, it demonstrates how Flora and Paul Gauguin were unable to find paradise, but were still able to inspire followers to keep working towards a socialist utopia.[118] Unfortunately, Vargas Llosa was not as successful in transforming these historical figures into fiction. Some critics, such as Barbara Mujica, argue that The Way to Paradise lacks the "audacity, energy, political vision, and narrative genius" that was present in his previous works.[119]

The works of Mario Vargas Llosa are viewed as both modernist and postmodernist novels.[120] Though there is still much debate over the differences between modernist and postmodernist literature, literary scholar M. Keith Booker claims that the difficulty and technical complexity of Vargas Llosa's early works, such as The Green House and Conversation in the Cathedral, are clearly elements of the modern novel.[31] Furthermore, these earlier novels all carry a certain seriousness of attitude—another important defining aspect of modernist art.[120] By contrast, his later novels such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, and The Storyteller (El hablador) appear to follow a postmodernist mode of writing.[121] These novels have a much lighter, farcical, and comic tone, characteristics of postmodernism.[45] Comparing two of Vargas Llosa's novels, The Green House and Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Booker discusses the contrast between modernism and postmodernism found in the writer's works: while both novels explore the theme of prostitution as well as the workings of the Peruvian military, Booker points out that the former is gravely serious whereas the latter is ridiculously comic.[45]

Mario Vargas Llosa, actor in his play Los cuentos de la peste, with Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Teatro Español, Madrid (2015).

Literary scholar M. Keith Booker argues that Vargas Llosa perfects the technique of interlacing dialogues in his novel The Green House.[45] By combining two conversations that occur at different times, he creates the illusion of a flashback. Vargas Llosa also sometimes uses this technique as a means of shifting location by weaving together two concurrent conversations happening in different places.[122] This technique is a staple of his repertoire, which he began using near the end of his first novel, The Time of the Hero.[123] However, he does not use interlacing dialogues in the same way in all of his novels. For example, in The Green House the technique is used in a serious fashion to achieve a sober tone and to focus on the interrelatedness of important events separated in time or space.[124] In contrast, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service employs this strategy for comic effects and uses simpler spatial shifts.[125] This device is similar to both Virginia Woolf's mixing of different characters' soliloquies and Gustave Flaubert's counterpoint technique in which he blends together conversation with other events, such as speeches.[122] This was seen to occur yet again in Vargas Llosa's most current work, “Tiempos Recios,” as two dialogues, one between Trujillo and Castillo Armas, and another between Trujillo and Abbes García, are juxtaposed.

Vargas Llosa's first literary influences were relatively obscure Peruvian writers such as Martín Adán, Carlos Oquendo de Amat, and César Moro.[126] As a young writer, he looked to these revolutionary novelists in search of new narrative structures and techniques in order to delineate a more contemporary, multifaceted experience of urban Peru. He was looking for a style different from the traditional descriptions of land and rural life made famous by Peru's foremost novelist at the time, José María Arguedas.[127] Vargas Llosa wrote of Arguedas's work that it was "an example of old-fashioned regionalism that had already exhausted its imaginary possibilities".[126] Although he did not share Arguedas's passion for indigenous reality, Vargas Llosa admired and respected the novelist for his contributions to Peruvian literature.[128] Indeed, he has published a book-length study on his work, La utopía arcaica (1996).

Rather than restrict himself to Peruvian literature, Vargas Llosa also looked abroad for literary inspiration. Two French figures, existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and novelist Gustave Flaubert, influenced both his technique and style.[129] Sartre's influence is most prevalent in Vargas Llosa's extensive use of conversation.[130] The epigraph of The Time of the Hero, his first novel, is also taken directly from Sartre's work.[131] Flaubert's artistic independence—his novels' disregard of reality and morals—has always been admired by Vargas Llosa,[132] who wrote a book-length study of Flaubert's aesthetics, The Perpetual Orgy.[133] In his analysis of Flaubert, Vargas Llosa questions the revolutionary power of literature in a political setting; this is in contrast to his earlier view that "literature is an act of rebellion", thus marking a transition in Vargas Llosa's aesthetic beliefs.[134] Other critics such as Sabine Köllmann argue that his belief in the transforming power of literature is one of the great continuities that characterize his fictional and non-fictional work, and link his early statement that 'Literature is Fire' with his Nobel Prize Speech 'In Praise of Reading and Writing'.[135]

One of Vargas Llosa's favourite novelists, and arguably the most influential on his writing career, is the American William Faulkner.[136] Vargas Llosa considers Faulkner "the writer who perfected the methods of the modern novel".[137] Both writers' styles include intricate changes in time and narration.[130][137] In The Time of the Hero, for example, aspects of Vargas Llosa's plot, his main character's development and his use of narrative time are influenced by his favourite Faulkner novel, Light in August.[138]

In addition to the studies of Arguedas and Flaubert, Vargas Llosa has written literary criticisms of other authors that he has admired, such as Gabriel García Márquez, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, and Jean-Paul Sartre.[139] The main goals of his non-fiction works are to acknowledge the influence of these authors on his writing, and to recognize a connection between himself and the other writers;[139] critic Sara Castro-Klarén argues that he offers little systematic analysis of these authors' literary techniques.[139] In The Perpetual Orgy, for example, he discusses the relationship between his own aesthetics and Flaubert's, rather than focusing on Flaubert's alone.[140]

•  Austria
  • Cross of Honour for Science and Art
•  Dominican Republic
  • Grand Cross with Silver Star of the Order of Christopher Columbus
•  France
  • Chevalier of the Legion of Honour
  • Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
  • Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1993)[166]
•  Mexico
  • Commander of the Order of the Aztec Eagle
•  Nicaragua
  • Grand Cross with Silver Star of the Order of Rubén Darío
•  Peru
  • Member of the Peruvian Academy of Language
  • Grand Cross with Diamonds of the Order of the Sun of Peru
  • 2011 – Grand Cross of the Medal of Honor of the National University of San Marcos, his alma mater.
•  Philippines
  • Honorary Professor, bestowed by the University of Santo Tomas, Espana, Manila
•  Spain
  • Hereditary Marquessate of Vargas Llosa, bestowed by King Juan Carlos I of Spain
  • Member of the Royal Spanish Academy
  • Gold Medal of the Community of Madrid

• 1992 – Boston University[172]

• 2010 – Nobel Prize for Literature

• 1959 – Los jefes (The Cubs and Other Stories, 1979)
• 1963 – La ciudad y los perros (The Time of the Hero, 1966)
• 1966 – La casa verde (The Green House, 1968)
• 1969 – Conversación en la catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral, 1975)
• 1973 – Pantaleón y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, 1978)
• 1977 – La tía Julia y el escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, 1982)
• 1981 – La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World, 1984)
• 1984 – Historia de Mayta (The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, 1985)
• 1986 – ¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero? (Who Killed Palomino Molero?, 1987)
• 1987 – El hablador (The Storyteller, 1989)
• 1988 – Elogio de la madrastra (In Praise of the Stepmother, 1990)
• 1993 – Lituma en los Andes (Death in the Andes, 1996)
• 1997 – Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto (The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, 1998)
• 2000 – La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat, 2001)
• 2003 – El paraíso en la otra esquina (The Way to Paradise, 2003)
• 2006 – Travesuras de la niña mala (The Bad Girl, 2007)
• 2010 – El sueño del celta (The Dream of the Celt, 2010)
• 2013 – El héroe discreto (The Discreet Hero, 2015)
• 2016 – Cinco esquinas (The Neighborhood, 2018)
• 2019 – Tiempos Recios (Harsh Times, 2021)

• 1958 – Bases para una interpretación de Rubén Darío (The basis for interpretation of Ruben Dario)
• 1971 – García Márquez: historia de un deicidio (García Márquez: Story of a Deicide)
• 1975 – La orgía perpetua: Flaubert y "Madame Bovary" (The Perpetual Orgy)
• 1983 – Contra viento y marea vol. 1 (Making Waves) – the English translation has selections from all three volumes of Contra viento y marea
• 1986 – Contra viento y marea vol. 2
• 1990 – Contra viento y marea vol. 3
• 1990 – La verdad de las mentiras: ensayos sobre la novela moderna (A Writer's Reality)
• 1993 – El pez en el agua. Memorias (A Fish in the Water)
• 1995 – Hitos y Mitos Literarios (The Milestones and the Stories of Greatest Literary Works) (Illustrated by Willi Glasauer), (Círculo de Lectores)
• 1996 – La utopía arcaica: José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo (Archaic utopia: José María Arguedas and the fictions of indigenismo)
• 1997 – Cartas a un joven novelista (Letters to a Young Novelist)
• 2000 – Nationalismus als neue Bedrohung (Nationalism as a new threat)[6]
• 2001 – El lenguaje de la pasión (The Language of Passion)
• 2004 – La tentación de lo imposible (The Temptation of the Impossible)
• 2007 – El Pregón de Sevilla (as Introduction for LOS TOROS)
• 2008 – Wellsprings[173]
• 2009 – El viaje a la ficción: El mundo de Juan Carlos Onetti
• 2011 – Touchstones: Essays on Literature, Art, and Politics
• 2012 – La civilización del espectáculo
• 2012 – In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture
• 2014 – Mi trayectora intelectual (My Intellectual Journey)
• 2015 – Notes on the Death of Culture
• 2018 – Sabers and Utopias
• 2018 – La llamada de la tribu (The Call of the Tribe)

• 1952 – La huida del inca
• 1981 – La señorita de Tacna
• 1983 – Kathie y el hipopótamo
• 1986 – La Chunga
• 1993 – El loco de los balcones
• 1996 – Ojos bonitos, cuadros feos
• 2007 – Odiseo y Penélope
• 2008 – Al pie del Támesis
• 2010 – Las mil y una noches

Vargas Llosa's essays and journalism have been collected as Contra viento y marea, issued in three volumes (1983, 1986, and 1990). A selection has been edited by John King and translated and published as Making Waves.

• 2003 – "The Language of Passion"