Mario Vargas Llosa: Artist or Politician?

In advance of the release of Mario Vargas Llosa’s new book The Time of the Hero, Thomas Mallon investigates the relationship between the Noble Prize-winning author’s work and the political movements of his native Peru. The article focuses on Llosa’s realist style during a time when more experimental Latin American authors were obtaining international prestige, and highlights the author’s presidential run in 1990, which put him on “the verge of becoming as famous an artist-politician as Václav Havel.”