Giant of Latin American literature

Mario Vargas Llosa, who has died at the age of 89 in his native Peru, was a towering figure in Latin American literature and culture who rarely shied away from controversy.

With more than 50 works to his name, many of which have been widely translated, Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 when judges dubbed him a “divinely gifted story-teller”. His depictions of authoritarianism, violence and machismo, using rich language and imagery, made him a star of the Latin American Boom literary movement that shone a global spotlight on the continent.

At first sympathetic to left-wing ideas, he grew disillusioned with Latin America’s…