But despite its apparent pessimism, Ribeyro's work is often comic, its humor springing from both the author's sense of irony and the accidents that befall his protagonists.
Later, he studied Arts and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, between 1946 and 1952, where he met Pablo Macera, Alberto Escobar and Luis Felipe Angell "Sofocleto" among other youth with intellectual and artistic interests.
By then he had written his first book Los gallinazos sin plumas (The featherless buzzards), a collection of short stories on urban issues, regarded as one of his most successful pieces of narrative writing.
During his European stay he had to take on many trades to survive, including those of newspapers recycling, concierge, loader on the subway, seller of printing materials, among others.
He was appointed as a professor at the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, and instigated the creation of the Institute for Popular Culture, in 1959.
After being confirmed as ambassador to Unesco in the late 1980s, he had a very rough verbal exchange with fellow Peruvian and friend Mario Vargas Llosa, regarding the political debate in Peru around the proposed nationalization of banks by the first presidential term of Alan García government, which divided public opinion in the country.
Ribeyro criticized Vargas Llosa for supporting the conservative sectors of the country, which according to him meant he was opposing the emergence of the popular classes.
Vargas Llosa answered in his memoir A Fish in the Water (1993), by pointing out what he considered Ribeyro's lack of consistency, which made him appear subservient to every single government so as to maintain his diplomatic appointment in Unesco.
However, apart from this embarrassing episode, Vargas Llosa has consistently praised the literary work of Ribeyro, whom he considers as one of the great storytellers in Spanish.