Vargas Llosa, Mario

Peruvian author, born in Arequipa in the southern part of the country. His parents divorced soon after his birth, and Mario moved with his mother to Cochabamba in Colombia, where they lived for some ten years with his mother's parents. When they later returned to Peru, it was to the northern city of Piura. When the parents reunited in 1946, the family took up residence in Lima, where Mario, after a conflict with his father, was sent to the military school Leoncio Prado, where he was not happy at all. After school, he studied for a time at the university in Lima and then in Barcelona in Spain. In the 50's, he worked among other things as a journalist and radio commentator in Lima. From the 60's and onwards he mostly lived abroad - in Spain, United Kingdom and France. After obtaining his doctoral degree in literary studies at the university in Madrid, he was also a visiting professor in the United States.