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 individual liberty in Latin America, Vargas Llosa was a prominent figure in the Spanish-speaking world. He gained fame with his first novel, 'The Time of the Hero,' which was a critical account of military life in Peru. Vargas Llosa was also a conservative political thinker and made a run for the presidency in 1990. He leaves behind a legacy of over 50 novels, essays, plays, and works of literary criticism.