García Márquez

In 1976, he punched Gabriel García Márquez in a Mexico City movie theater, leaving the writer with a deep welt around his eye.

García Márquez famously posed for a smiling portrait with a black eye and theories quickly abounded about the reason for the fight — the principal ones having to do with García Márquez consoling Patricia in the wake of reputed infidelities by her husband.

Its leading authors, who included Vargas Llosa's Colombian friend and sometime rival Gabriel García Márquez - who pioneered the kaleidoscopic magical realism style of writing - became household names and their works were read around the world.

Famously the two authors did not speak to each other for decades after Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez in the face in a Mexican cinema in 1976.

Friends of García Márquez said the dispute had revolved around García Márquez's friendship with Vargas Llosa's then-wife, Patricia, but Vargas Llosa told students at a Madrid university in 2017 that it had been down to their opposing views on Cuba and its communist leader, Fidel Castro.