Mario Vargas Llosa was born to a middle-class family[9] on March 28, 1936, in the southern Peruvian provincial city of Arequipa.[10] He was the only child of Ernesto Vargas Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta (the former a radio operator in an aviation company, the latter the daughter of an old criollo family), who separated a few months before his birth.[10] Shortly after Mario’s birth, his father revealed that he was having an affair with a German woman; consequently, Mario has two younger half-brothers: Enrique and Ernesto Vargas.[11]