Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru. He studied two years in Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima for two years after having lived in Bolivia and Piura (Peru). In 1959, he was awarded the Javier Prado Scholarship and traveled to Spain where he obtained a PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid. He then moved to Paris where he intensified his literary work.

In 1963, Vargas Llosa published The Time of the Hero, which was met with great acclaim. He was soon hailed as one of the main exponents of the Latin American literature boom alongside Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In 1987, he emerged as a political figure after leading the opposition to the nationalization of banks proposed by President Alan Garcia. In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for President of Peru for the Democratic Front.

After losing the Presidency in two close elections, he returned to Europe. Since then, he has produced celebrated works such as Los Cachorros (1967), The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997), The Feast of the Goat (2000), The Way to Paradise (2003), Notes on the Death of Culture (2012), The Call of the Tribe (2018), Harsh Times (2021) and Te dedico mi silencio (2023). He has also been a Visiting Professor or Resident Writer at prestigious universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Columbia, Cambridge and Georgetown. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 and became a member of the French Academy in 2023.

He joined the Global Commission on Drug Policy in 2011, and is also a member of the (regional) Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy (LACDD).