Fluent in German and passing as an Aryan, she once crossed into Germany, uncovered Nazi military secrets and nursed a wounded, and deceived, SS officer.
A neoconservative who fervidly opposed Communism and the fundamentalist regime in Iran, he wrote many books and articles, some of whose theories were later discredited.
Mr. Vargas Llosa, who ran for Peru’s presidency in 1990 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010, transformed episodes from his personal life into books that reverberated far beyond the borders of his native country.