He was born in Arequipa (Peru) in 1936. In 1953 he entered San Marcos University in Lima, where he studied Arts and Law. In 1959 he moved to Europe, and lived for several years in Madrid and Paris. In 1964 he went back to Peru and a year later married Patricia Llosa, with whom he has had three children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana. In the seventies he went back to Europe and lived in London and Barcelona. A politically-committed man with progressive ideas, he sympathised with the Cuban revolution until 1971 when the Padilla Case led him to distance himself from its ideology. Concerned about the political situation in his own country, he decided to take an active part by running for president in 1990. He is one of the most famous writers to have emerged from what was called the Latin American Boom. He first established his reputation in 1959 with the book of short stories “Los jefes”, but achieved international fame with his novel “The City and the Dogs” (1962), which dealt with the reality of military colleges. “The Green House” (1966) and especially “Conversation in the Cathedral” (1971) established him as one of the key figures in literature in Spanish. In the seventies he wrote “Captain Pantoja and the Special Services” (1973) and “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” (1978). In 1981 he once again produced a political novel with “The War of the End of the World”. For several years he devoted himself to writing essays and journalism and to the theatre. In 1997 he returned to narrative literature with “The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto”, an erotic entertaining novel, while “The Feast of the Goat” (2000) portrayed a Latin American dictator that is directly modelled on the figure of Trujillo. His latest book, “The Way to Paradise”, about the life of the painter, Gauguin, appeared in 2003. An Honorary Doctor at various universities, a controversial columnist and essayist, he has received numerous awards throughout his career. Francisco Lombardi has turned two of his most emblematic novels into films: “The City and the Dogs” in 1985 (Award for Best Director at the San Sebastián Festival) and “Captain Pantoja and the Special Services” in 2000.