The War of the End of the World (Spanish: La guerra del fin del mundo) is a 1981 novel written by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.

In the midst of the economic decline — following drought and the end of slavery — in the province of Bahia in Northeastern Brazil, the poor of the backlands are attracted by the charismatic figure and simple religious teachings of Antonio Conselheiro, called "The Counselor", who preaches that the end of the world is imminent and that the political chaos that surrounds the collapse of the Empire of Brazil and its replacement by a republic is the work of the devil.

Seizing a fazenda in an area blighted by economic decline at Canudos the Counselor's followers build a large town and repeatedly defeat growing military expeditions designed to remove them.

In an epic final clash, a whole army is sent to extirpate Canudos and instigates a terrible and brutal battle with the poor while politicians of the old order see their world destroyed in the conflagration.

By 1990, the author considered The War of the End of the World his most accomplished novel[2] — an opinion shared by the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño [citation needed], as well as the American critic Harold Bloom, who includes the novel in what he calls the "Western canon".