Death isn't enough. It doesn't remove the stain. But a slap, a whiplash, square on the face, does. Because a man's face is as sacred as his mother or his wife.

These novels have a much lighter farcical and comic tone characteristics of postmodernism. This early piece gained wide public attention and immediate success. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is considered one of the most striking examples of how the language and imagery of popular culture can be used in literature.

Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance revolt and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros literally The City and the Dogs 1963/1966) The Green House (La casa verde 1965/1968) and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral 1969/1975). Like many Latin American writers Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career; over the course of his life he has gradually moved from the political left towards liberalism or neoliberalism a definitively more conservative political position.