by Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa was born into Peru’s small but privileged middle class in 1936. From his birthplace in Arequipa, he moved with his mother and her parents to Cochabamba, Ecuador, where Vargas Llosa’s grandfather would direct first a cotton farm and then the Peruvian consulate. The move offered respite from the shame of divorce: the future writer’s father, an operator with the Panagra radio chain, had abandoned the family even before Mario was born and did not reappear for a decade. When Vargas Llosa met his father for the first time, it was in the northern city of Piura, Peru, where the grandfather was serving as prefect. The unexpected discovery of his father, followed by his parents’ reunion and move to the capital Lima, marked the end of young Vargas Llosa’s idyllic, even...