Mario Llosa, Nobel prize-winning author, dies at 89

Mario Llosa, a renowned Peruvian novelist, essayist, and Nobel laureate, has died at age 89.

His death was announced on Sunday in a statement issued by his children, who stated that he died peacefully, surrounded by family.

“It is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,” the family statement shared by his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa on X read.

The family also said Mr Llosa’s “departure will sadden his relatives, his friends and his readers around the world.”

“But we hope that they will find comfort, as we do, in the fact that he enjoyed a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leaves behind him a body of work that will outlive him,” the statement read.

The family, however, noted that there would be no public ceremony of his cremation as he would be buried by family and close friends at a private event.

“He enjoyed a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leaves behind him a body of work that will outlive him,” the family noted.

Mr Llosa’s body of work is huge. He was a central figure in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and produced works focused on the evils of totalitarianism.

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Born in 1936 in Arequipa, the second-most populated city in Peru, Vargas Llosa began his career as a crime reporter at the age of 15.

He initially supported the Cuban Revolution, but he later became a vocal advocate for liberal democracy and free-market capitalism.

In 1990, he ran unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency and afterwards returned to full-time writing.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 for his literary contributions.