Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian author and Nobel literature laureate, dies at 89

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel literature laureate and a giant of Latin American letters, died Sunday. He was 89.

He was a prolific author and essayist with such celebrated novels as “The Time of the Hero” (La Ciudad y los Perros) and “Feast of the Goat,” and won myriad prizes. The Nobel committee said it was awarding him in 2010 "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat."

“It is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family,” read a letter signed by his children Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana, and posted by Álvaro on X.

“His 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,” they added.

The author's lawyer and close friend, Enrique Ghersi, confirmed the death to The Associated Press and recalled the writer’s last birthday on March 28 at the home of his daughter, Morgana. “He spent it happy; his close friends surrounded him, he ate his cake, we joked that day that there were still 89 more years to go, he had a long, fruitful, and free life,” Ghersi said.

Tributes poured in for Vargas Llosa. In Spain, where he spent long stretches of his life, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia expressed their condolences, writing on social media that “the Olympus of universal literature has opened its doors to Mario Vargas Llosa.”

Vargas Llosa published his first collection of stories “The Cubs and Other Stories” (Los Jefes) in 1959. But he burst onto the literary stage in 1963 with his groundbreaking debut “The Time of the Hero,” a novel that drew on his experiences at a Peruvian military academy and angered the country’s military. A thousand copies were burned by military authorities, with some generals calling the book false and Vargas Llosa a communist.

That, and subsequent novels such as “Conversation in the Cathedral,” (Conversación en la Catedral) in 1969, quickly established Vargas Llosa as one of the leaders of the so-called “Boom,” or new wave of Latin American writers of the 1960s and 1970s, alongside Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes.

Vargas Llosa started writing early, and at 15 was a part-time crime reporter for La Crónica newspaper. According to his official website, other jobs he had included revising names on cemetery tombs in Peru, working as a teacher in the Berlitz school in Paris and briefly on the Spanish desk at Agence France-Presse in Paris.

He continued publishing articles in the press for most of his life, most notably in a twice-monthly political opinion column titled “Piedra de Toque” (Touchstones) that was printed in several newspapers.

Vargas Llosa came to be a fierce defender of personal and economic liberties, gradually edging away from his communism-linked past, and regularly attacked Latin American leftist leaders he viewed as dictators.

Although an early supporter of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, he later grew disillusioned and denounced Castro’s Cuba. By 1980, he said he no longer believed in socialism as a solution for developing nations.

In a famous incident in Mexico City in 1976, Vargas Llosa punched fellow Nobel Prize winner and ex-friend García Márquez, whom he later ridiculed as “Castro’s courtesan.” It was never clear whether the fight was over politics or a personal dispute, as neither writer ever wanted to discuss it publicly.

As he slowly turned his political trajectory toward free-market conservatism, Vargas Llosa lost the support of many of his Latin American literary contemporaries and attracted much criticism even from admirers of his work.

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa was born March 28, 1936, in Peru’s southern city of Arequipa, high in the Andes at the foot of the Misti volcano.

His father, Ernesto Vargas Maldonado, left the family before he was born. To avoid public scandal, his mother, Dora Llosa Ureta, took her child to Bolivia, where her father was the Peruvian consul in Cochabamba.

Vargas Llosa said his early life was “somewhat traumatic,” pampered by his mother and grandmother in a large house with servants, his every whim granted.

It was not until he was 10, after the family had moved to Peru’s coastal city of Piura, that he learned his father was alive. His parents reconciled and the family moved to Peru’s capital, Lima.

Vargas Llosa described his father as a disciplinarian who viewed his son’s love of Jules Verne and writing poetry as surefire routes to starvation, and feared for his “manhood,” believing that “poets are always homosexuals.”

After failing to get the boy enrolled in a naval academy because he was underage, Vargas Llosa’s father sent him to Leoncio Prado Military Academy — an experience that was to stay with Vargas Llosa and led to “The Time of the Hero.” The book won the Spanish Critics Award.

The military academy “was like discovering hell,” Vargas Llosa said later.

He entered Peru’s San Marcos University to study literature and law, “the former as a calling and the latter to please my family, which believed, not without certain cause, that writers usually die of hunger.”

After earning his literature degree in 1958 — he didn’t bother submitting his final law thesis — Vargas Llosa won a scholarship to pursue a doctorate in Madrid.

Vargas Llosa drew much of his inspiration from his Peruvian homeland, but preferred to live abroad, residing for spells each year in Madrid, New York and Paris.

His early novels revealed a Peruvian world of military arrogance and brutality, of aristocratic decadence, and of Stone Age Amazon Indians existing simultaneously with 20th-century urban blight.

“Peru is a kind of incurable illness and my relationship to it is intense, harsh and full of the violence of passion,” Vargas Llosa wrote in 1983.

After 16 years in Europe, he returned in 1974 to a Peru then ruled by a left-wing military dictatorship. “I realized I was losing touch with the reality of my country, and above all its language, which for a writer can be deadly,” he said.

In 1990, he ran for the presidency of Peru, a reluctant candidate in a nation torn apart by a messianic Maoist guerrilla insurgency and a basket-case, hyperinflation economy.

But he was defeated by a then-unknown university rector, Alberto Fujimori, who resolved much of the political and economic chaos but went on to become a corrupt and authoritarian leader in the process.

Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa’s longtime friend, later confessed that he had rooted against the writer’s candidacy, observing: “Peru’s uncertain gain would be literature’s loss. Literature is eternity, politics mere history.”

Vargas Llosa also used his literary talents to write several successful novels about the lives of real people, including French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin and his grandmother, Flora Tristan, in “The Way to Paradise” in 2003 and 19th-century Irish nationalist and diplomat Sir Roger Casement in “The Dream of the Celt” in 2010. His last published novel was “Harsh Times” (Tiempos Recios) in 2019 about a U.S.-backed coup d’etat in Guatemala in 1954.

He became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1994 and held visiting professor and resident writer posts in more than a dozen colleges and universities across the world.

In his teens, Vargas Llosa joined a communist cell and eloped with and later married a 33-year-old Bolivian, Julia Urquidi — the sister-in-law of his uncle. He later drew inspiration from their nine-year marriage to write the hit comic novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” (La Tía Julia y el Escribidor).

In 1965, he married his first cousin, Patricia Llosa, 10 years his junior, and together they had three children. They divorced 50 years later, and he started a relationship with Spanish society figure Isabel Preysler, former wife of singer Julio Iglesias and mother of singer Enrique Iglesias. They separated in 2022.

Vargas Llosa is survived by his children.

Their letter announcing his death said his remains will be cremated and there won't be any public ceremony.

Giles reported from Madrid.

Funeral workers stand beside a hearse driving the coffin of Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa to a crematorium in Lima, Peru, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

A hearse transports the coffin of Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa to a crematorium in Lima, Peru, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Newspapers for sale carry the news of the death of Peruvian author and Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa at a kiosk in Lima, Peru, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Family and friends watch a hearse transport the coffin of Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa to a crematorium in Lima, Peru, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, center, is surrounded by security as she leaves the home of the late Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, where she gave her condolences to his family the day after his death, in Lima, Peru, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Gabriel Rimachi holds an issue of the literary magazine he directs, dedicated to Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, after the announcement of the writer's death at the age of 89, in front of his home in Lima, Peru, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

FILE - Isabel Preysler, left, and writer Mario Vargas Llosa arrive at the red carpet of the Goya Film Awards Ceremony in Madrid, Spain, Feb. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Abraham Caro Marin, File)

FILE - Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso, left, honors writer Mario Vargas Llosa with the medal of "merit in the Order of the Grand Cross" in recognition of the writer's contribution to world literature, in Quito, Ecuador, Sept. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, File)

FILE - Isabel Preysler, left, and writer Mario Vargas Llosa arrive at the red carpet of the Goya Film Awards Ceremony in Madrid, Spain, Feb. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/Abraham Caro Marin, File)

FILE - Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, left, receives the Nobel Prize in Literature from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, right, at the Concert Hall in Stockholm, Dec. 10, 2010. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP, File)

FILE - Peruvian writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature Mario Vargas Llosa smiles during a press conference at the presentation of a new theatre play in Madrid, Spain, April 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File)

FILE - Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso, left, honors writer Mario Vargas Llosa with the medal of "merit in the Order of the Grand Cross" in recognition of the writer's contribution to world literature, in Quito, Ecuador, Sept. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, File)

FILE - Peru's Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa rearranges his hat during ceremonies for his conferment of the degree of Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa, at the De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

FILE - Mario Vargas Llosa is interviewed at his home in Lima, Peru in 1978. (AP Photo/Hank Ackerman, File)

FILE - Students learn about Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa at a public library in Lima, Peru, Oct. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

FILE - Peru's Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa attends a ceremony where he was given an Honoris Causa degree by Lisbon Nova University, in Lisbon, Portugal, July 22, 2014. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, second from left, stands next to Popular Party leader in Catalonia Xavier Garcia Albiol, right, as they lead a march to protest the Catalan government's push for secession from the rest of Spain in downtown Barcelona, Spain, Oct. 8, 2017. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

FILE - Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa attends the 46th edition of the International Book Fair in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

FILE - Writer Mario Vargas Llosa speaks at a rally in Lima, Peru, Aug. 21, 1987, to a crowd of more than 50,000 people. (AP Photo/A. Balaguer, File)

FILE - Writer Mario Vargas Llosa speaks to reporters in New York, Oct. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)