Now 86, Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the world’s greatest living novelists. He has received all the honors to prove it: a Nobel Prize in literature, a Miguel de Cervantes Prize (the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary award), and election to the Académie Française. He is also, arguably, the most politically important novelist of the last half century. While others have cozied up to authoritarians of various stripes, Vargas Llosa has been a staunch defender of liberal democracy. He even ran for president of his native Peru in 1990. Unfortunately, he lost to Alberto Fujimori, who defeated the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas but went on to dissolve Congress, suspend the constitution, and purge the judiciary.
