Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner, has died at the age of 89. Known for his gritty realism and depictions of the struggle for individual liberty in Latin America, Vargas Llosa transformed episodes from his personal life into books that resonated beyond his native country. He gained renown as a young writer with his critical account of military life in Peru, published in 1963. Vargas Llosa was also a conservative political thinker and ran for the presidency in 1990, advocating for free-market causes. Throughout his career, he produced over 50 novels, essays, plays, and works of literary criticism.