The Challenge Summary
Mario Vargas Llosa

The Challenge Summary

In 1958 (at the age of twenty-two), Mario Vargas Llosa won first place for his short story "The Challenge" in a fiction contest sponsored in Peru by Revue française. His prize was a trip to Paris, a city he had longed to visit and to which he later returned to seriously pursue writing.

Among the themes common in Vargas Llosa's fiction is that of establishment of power by means of violence. Although...

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