Mario was a worthy literary rival to Gabriel

With the death of Peru's novelist and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa at the age of 89 in Lima on Sunday, another star from the constellation of shining Latin American writers falls off. The other was Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

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The two were friends and ideological rivals. While Marquez was a much celebrated author in literary circles across the globe for his 'magical realism', Llosa was read, appreciated and respected for his literary genius among many readers in the same literary circles.

Llosa's style did not practise magical realism, but his narrative style was bold and brisk, touched the raw nerve of the reader to the quick, and told tales with a touch of casualness but there was nothing casual about them. Llosa practised the serious art of telling an important story with realistic overtones and moral implications, which were nuanced and even grey. This has to do with his relations to politics, which was more complicated than of Marquez.