Like the Greeks, the ancient Peruvians had a rich tradition of oral poetry, as there were no known writing systems at the time. It consisted of two main poetic forms: harawis, a form of lyrical poetry, and hayllis, a form of epic poetry. Both forms described the daily life and rituals of the time and were recited by a poet known as the harawec.

A variety of 16th-century Spanish chroniclers, most notably Bernabé Cobo and Pedro Cieza de León, attempted to describe the exotic conditions of the New World through the confining looking glass of the Spanish world-view and lexicon. An entirely different perspective was presented by indigenous writer Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, whose decision to write the king of Spain, Philip III, blossomed into a 1,179-page letter titled Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno. The letter was written between 1613 and 1615 but only discovered in the Royal Library of Copenhagen in 1908. Apart from a detailed view of Inca customs, what is most fascinating about this work is the blend of Spanish and Quechua juxtaposed with a series of 400 ink drawings that portray the bloodiest moments of the Spanish conquest, as well as Inca festivities and traditions.

Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616) was educated in Cusco as the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess. He emigrated as a young man to Spain, where he spen the rest of his life writing histories and chronicles of his Inca homeland. His major work, Comentarios Reales, written in 1609, is a highly anecdotal and personal view of the Inca empire. Throughout the text Garcilaso employs a variety of rhetorical strategies to ennoble the Inca aristocracy—and in the process, himself—in the eyes of the royal Spanish court. It is the first example of a mestizo author from the New World grappling with the complexities of a torn identity.

During the viceroyalty, theaters in Lima and Cusco were at the center of the social life of the Peruvian aristocracy. Most of the productions were imported and written by Spain’s Golden Age authors, who had no problem being approved by Peru’s Catholic censors. Local playwrights were occasionally approved and their works, though innocuous on the surface, often contain subtle critiques of the viceroyalty’s racial and political power structure. Scathing poetic satire was circulated secretly throughout upper-class Peruvian society and reflected the growing tensions as Peru’s creole elite strained against the straitjacket of Spanish rule.

Following the 1821 independence, literary Romanticism took root in Peru, evolving in an entirely different direction from its European counterpart. Instead of a preoccupation with personal identity and freedom, Peru’s Romantic writers fell into the task of nation-building and describing what it meant to be Peruvian. Some renowned authors of the period were Carlos Augusto Salaverry and José Arnaldo Márquez. At the same time, Costumbrismo developed as a literary or pictorial interpretation of local everyday life, mannerisms, and customs. Peru’s best-known writer of this style is Ricardo Palma (1833–1919), whose most famous work is a descriptive collection of legends and personality sketches known as Tradiciones peruanas. Palma was a man of letters, a former liberal politician, and later the director of the National Library of Peru; he rebuilt the collection after it was sacked by the Chilean army during the War of the Pacific.

Peru’s best-known female writer is Clorinda Matto de Turner (1852–1909), born in Cusco, who wrote both in Quechua and Spanish. She edited a series of acclaimed literary journals, including Peru Ilustrado, and wrote a trilogy of novels, the best known of which is Aves sin nido (Torn from the Nest), translated into English in 1904 and republished recently by Oxford Press and the University of Texas Press. Matto de Turner was forced into exile in Argentina after being excommunicated by the Catholic church and having her house burnt down. She died in 1909 and was forgotten for decades, though she is slowly gathering critical acclaim and recognition as one of the pioneers of Latin American feminism.

César Vallejo (1892–1938), poet, writer and journalist, is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. His main works include Los Heraldos Negros (1918), the revolutionary Trilce (1922), and Poemas Humanos (published posthumously in 1939). Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of Vallejo’s books was distinct from the others and, in its own sense, revolutionary. Born in Santiago de Chuco in Peru’s northern highlands, he moved to Paris in the 1920s, where he spent the rest of his life immersed in the vanguard movement and the rise of international communism. His complete poetry has been published in English by the University of California Press.

The growing industrialization of Peru in the 20th century, and the continued oppression of the Indian population, gave birth to a new genre of socially conscious literature known as indigenismo. José María Arguedas (1911–1969) was born to a white family but was raised by a Quechuan-speaking family in Andahuaylas, in Peru’s southern Andes. He ended up in Lima, where he was educated at the prestigious University of San Marcos. His works of social realism portray the oppression of Indian communities and helped inspire the liberation theologies that continue to cause conflict in Peru’s Catholic church. Two of his most famous novels, Yawar Fiesta and Los Ríos Profundos (Deep Rivers), are in English and have been published by the University of Texas Press.

Ciro Alegría (1909–1967) was a mestizo born in the Marañón Valley of northern Peru whose lyrical novels, like those of Arguedas, portray the suffering of Peru’s Andean peoples. His best-known works are La Serpiente de Oro (The Golden Serpent) and El Mundo Es Ancho y Ajeno (Broad and Alien Is the World), which became widely known outside Peru in the mid-20th century and were translated into several languages.

Mario Vargas Llosa (born 1936) is one of Latin America’s most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the “Latin American Boom” of the 1960s. Latin America’s boom writers dropped the regionalist, folkloric themes of their predecessors and experimented wildly with form and content. Nearly all of Vargos Llosa’s novels, including his world-acclaimed Conversación en la catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral), La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World), and La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat), have been translated into English and make an excellent introduction for those wishing to explore Peruvian literature. Once a supporter of Castro and communism during his youth, Vargas Llosa led a middle- and upper-class revolt against President Alan García Pérez in the late 1980s and then ran for president in 1990. After being defeated by Alberto Fujimori, Vargas Llosa went to Spain. Nowadays he lives back in Lima’s Barranco neighborhood and is actively involved in Peruvian politics and social issues. A prolific writer and columnist in newspapers around the world, Vargas Llosa is a die-hard defender of neo-liberalism and unquestionably a seeker of freedom through his writing.

Alfredo Bryce Echenique (born 1939) is Peru’s other best-known novelist. He has produced a dozen novels and numerous collections of short stories. After spending much of his life in Europe, he now resides in Peru.

Several middle-aged and young Peruvians are making waves on the international literary scene. Alonso Cueto and Santiago Roncagliolo both won international prizes for their 2006 novels, The Blue Hour and Red April, respectively. The works deal with Peru’s history of terrorism and war. More recently, Daniel Alarcón (born 1977), a promising Peruvian-born writer raised in the U.S., has published War by Candlelight and Lost City Radio, his debut novel.