Vargas Llosa received his early education in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where his grandfather was the Peruvian consul. He attended a series of schools in Peru before entering a military school, Leoncio Prado, in Lima in 1950; he later attended the University of San Marcos in Lima.

M ario Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. During his childhood in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Piura, a city in the north of Peru, he believed that his father had died. However, this was a lie told by his mother to conceal their tortuous separation.

Mario Vargas Llosa was born to Ernesto Vargas Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta on March 28, 1936 in Arequipa, in southern Peru. His father abandoned the family immediately and, due to the social prejudice his mother faced as a result, her parents moved the whole family to Cochabamba, Bolivia.