Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa is so many things he is best described as a modern-day Renaissance man. Politician, playwright, art, film and literature critic and essayist, he is perhaps best known as one of a handful of novelists that have brought contemporary Latin American literature to an international audience.

The one constant in Llosa's colourful life and writing has been the pursuit of dictatorships. His latest novel 'The Feast of the Goat', lays bare the regime of the Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo, and is being hailed by critics as perhaps his best work yet.