Renowned Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a Nobel laureate in literature and a giant of Latin American literature, died on Sunday. He breathed his last at the age of 89. The sad news was announced by his family.

"It is with deep sorrow that we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away peacefully today in Lima, surrounded by his family," read a letter signed by his children Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana and posted by Álvaro on X.

The Peruvian writer and playwright was considered one of the greatest contemporary novelists and essayists. In addition to the Nobel Prize in 2010, he has received numerous awards, including a prestigious award in 1994. Among his most famous novels are: "The City and the Dogs" (1963), "The Green House" (1966), "Conversation in the Cathedral" (1975).

Vargas Llosa returned to live in Lima in 2022, after a long period of residence in Europe since 1990, when he ran in Peru's presidential elections as the candidate of a center-right coalition.

One of the most significant voices in South American literature, he achieved fame with the realistic novels "The City and the Dogs", a brutal and realistic (partly autobiographical) description of life in the military college of Lima, and "The Green House", a novel set in a brothel in the Peruvian province.

In 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his cartography of power structures and his sharp images of resistance, revolt, and individual defeat."