Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa captured the world's imagination

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer whose novels spoke of the human quest for freedom and won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 2010, was once a frequent visitor to Lima’s Café Haiti in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood.

So perhaps it’s little surprise that Mr. Vargas Llosa and his significance in Peru and beyond are topics circulating among Café Haiti’s breakfast crowd on April 14, a day after the great intellectual died at his Lima home.

“Vargas Llosa was a point of pride for all of us in Peru, every house of a certain educational level had at least one of his books, usually more,” says Lemer Panduro, a retired military officer having breakfast with his wife at Café Haiti.

Why We Wrote This

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa’s experiences with military dictatorship influenc