The recent death of Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the greatest writers in the Spanish language and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, has sparked a wave of tributes around all the world, where his work has been widely translated and read for decades.

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Vargas Llosa’s literature has crossed not only languages, but also cultures, becoming part of the contemporary literature landscape, even in the Arab language.

Thanks to translators such as Palestinian Salih Almani—an essential figure in bringing the Latin American “Boom” to Arab readers—and Tunisian Walid Soliman, many of Vargas Llosa’s most iconic novels have been made available in Arabic. Among the translated titles are The Feast of the Goat, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, The War of the End of the World, The Way to Paradise, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, Death in the Andes, The Dream of the Celt, and The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto.

These translations have been published by renowned houses in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Morocco, and have featured in major book fairs such as those in Cairo, Beirut, and Abu Dhabi. His works are also studied in Arab universities as part of comparative literature and translation programs.

Interest in his storytelling even led to the establishment of the Mario Vargas Llosa Literary Translation Prize in 2014, awarded for Spanish-to-Arabic translations. Today, his legacy lives on more vividly than ever, continuing to build bridges between languages, readers, and literary traditions.

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