# The best Mario Vargas Llosa novels

The Peruvian Nobel laureate's novels ordered by critics' and readers' rankings: the 1960s Boom on top and the mature Feast of the Goat close behind.

- 21 votes · 18 items
- Apr 16, 2025 · medalloversionoriginal
- https://even.best/en/l/2302/the-best-mario-vargas-llosa-novels

## Top 18

1. **The Feast of the Goat** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — 2000. The end of Trujillo's dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
2. **The War of the End of the World** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — 1981. The Canudos rebellion in the Brazilian backlands.
3. **Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — 1977. A young love affair and the craziest radio soaps.
4. **Conversation in the Cathedral** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — 1969. Peru under Odría, in a four-hour talk in a bar.
5. **Who Killed Palomino Molero?** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — 1986. A short crime novel featuring Officer Lituma.
6. **The Time of the Hero** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1963. A Lima military academy; the novel that launched the Boom.
7. **Captain Pantoja and the Special Service** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1973. A captain organises a "visitors" service for jungle barracks.
8. **The Dream of the Celt** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 2010. The life of Roger Casement, his first novel after the Nobel.
9. **Death in the Andes** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1993. Disappearances in the highlands during the Shining Path years. Planeta Prize.
10. **The Storyteller** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — 1987. A storyteller among the Machiguenga people.
11. **The Green House** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1966. A brothel in Piura and the Amazon jungle.
12. **The Bad Girl** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 2006. A love that keeps coming back for forty years.
13. **The Way to Paradise** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 2003. Flora Tristán and her grandson Paul Gauguin.
14. **The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 1997. The fantasies and letters of a Lima aesthete.
15. **The Discreet Hero** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 2013. A Piura businessman who refuses to pay extortionists.
16. **Harsh Times** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 2019. The 1954 coup in Guatemala.
17. **Le dedico mi silencio** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 2023. His last novel, about Peruvian creole music.
18. **The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta** (-2 · ▲0 ▼2) — 1984. A writer pieces together a revolutionary's life.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.