Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa, 'a titan of Latin American literature', dies aged 89

The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the pivotal figures who ignited a global boom in Latin American literature, has died aged 89.

- Richard Lea Sian Cain

His death on Sunday was announced in a statement signed by his children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa.

Vargas Llosa "passed away peacefully in Lima... surrounded by his family", they wrote.

"His departure will sadden his relatives, his friends and his readers around the world, but we hope that they will find comfort, as we do, in the fact that he enjoyed a long, adventurous and fruitful life, and leaves behind him a body of work that will outlive him."

Over a career that spanned more than 50 years, Vargas Llosa charted power and corruption in a series of novels including The Time of the Hero, Conversation in the Cathedral and The Feast of the Goat. Living a life that was as colourful as his fiction, Vargas Llosa also launched a failed bid for the Peruvian presidency, nursed a long-running feud with Gabriel García Márquez and triumphed as a Nobel laureate in 2010.

Mary Cannam, the chief executive of Faber, told the Bookseller magazine: "I was extremely saddened to learn of the death of Mario Vargas Llosa. He was a titan of Latin American literature; one of the most significant voices of a generation."