A native of Peru and a Marxist in his youth, Mr. Vargas Llosa rebelled to become what the New York Times described as "one of the most celebrated writers of the Spanish-speaking world, an anti-totalitarian intellectual whose work covers the range of human experience." He went to on to oppose socialism and embrace the ideas of Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin and F. A. Hayek in supporting decentralized political power and free and open societies, and subsequently he ran for President of Peru in 1990, barely losing.

A member of the Royal Spanish Academy, he is the author of many plays and more than thirty books, including The Cubs and Other Stories; The Time of the Hero; The Green House; Conversation in the Cathedral; Captain Pantoja and the Special Service; Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter; The War of the End of the World; The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta; Who Killed Palomino Molero?; The Storyteller; In Praise of the Stepmother; Death in the Andes; Notebooks of Don Rigoberto; The Feast of the Goat; The Way to Paradise; The Bad Girl; The Dream of the Celt; The Perpetual Orgy; A Writer’s Reality; A Fish in the Water; Archaic Utopia: José María Arguedas and the fictions of indigenismo; Letters to a Young Novelist; The Language of Passion; The Temptation of the Impossible; El Pregón de Sevilla; El Viaje a la Ficcion; In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture; Touchstones: Essays on Literature, Art, and Politics; Making Waves; and The Language of Passion.

He has also received the National Book Critics Award (twice), Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Leopoldo Alas Prize, Premio Planeta, St. Louis Literary Award, Rómulo Gallegos Prize, Peruvian National Prize, Critics’ Annual Prize for Theatre, Prince of Asturias Prize, and Irving Kristol Award, and in 2010, he was decreed by King Juan Carlos I to become the 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa.