Mario Vargas Llosa, Renowned Peruvian novelist, playwright, and essayist, spoke to a crowd of 270 at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics April18 as part of the institute’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

The author of 35 novels and published writings, including The Time of the Hero, The Green House, and The War of the End of the World, he discussed the importance of literary works for young people today and the idea of fantasy in fiction. Vargas Llosa used the example of Miguel deCervantes’s Don Quixote, which is 400 years old this year, to illustrate how “vibrant and current this artistic creation remains.”

People hunger for fiction, he told an audience of students, faculty, staff and members of Latin American communities in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Fiction is a way for men and women to step out of their lives and escape to a borrowed life of fantasy, magic, and fun. It is human to want more than life offers an individual, and thanks to fiction, “we are able to live multiple lives and influence our own destiny,”

Vargas Llosa told listeners.“We are fighting reality with fantasy.” Vargas Llosa is known as an outspoken advocate for the responsibility of writers and artists to incorporate in their work a voice for the oppressed. In 1991, he ran for the Peruvian presidency, but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori. His candidacy and controversial stances on social and political issues in Latin America have made him a well-known international figure.

His talk, however, focused on fiction, even when an audience member asked him a question about modern Latin American government. In addition to his talk, Vargas Llosa met with students on campus.