Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936 as the only son of Ernesto Vargas Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta, who separated a few months after he was born.  He spent the first years of his life with his mother in Bolivia, but his grandfather obtained an important political post in Piura, in Peru, his family returned to Peru where he studied in the Colegio Salesiano.  When his parents reestablished their relationship they moved to Lima, and the young Mario met his father for the first time.  He spent his teenage years in the capital.  Vargas Llosa attended Leoncio Prado Military Academy (which would become the setting for The Time of the Hero), and Colegio Nacional San Miguel de Piura.

In 1955 he married his aunt, Julia Urquidi, and they divorced in 1964.  During that marriage he studied literature and law at the University of San Marcos, and then ttended graduate school at the University of Madrid, from where he received his Ph.D. in 1959.

His first collection of short stories, Los Jefes, appeared in 1959, the year in which he moved to France. In Paris Vargas Llosa worked as Spanish teacher, journalist for Agence-France-Presse, and broadcaster for Radio Télévision Française in early 1960s.

He married Patricia Llosa in 1965, together they would have a daughter and two sons.  Vargas Llosa moved to Barcelona in 1970, and back to Peru in 1975.  Currently he lives in London.