Nobel Prize Literature 2010 Winner – Mario Vargas Llosa

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, who once ran for president in his homeland, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. Vargas Llosa is the 1st South American winner of the prestigious ten millions kronor ($1.5 million) Nobel Prize in literature since it was awarded to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982.

The Swedish Academy said it honored the 74-year-old author “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”

Vargas Llosa has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including “Conversation in the Cathedral” and “The Green House.” In 1995, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s most distinguished literary honor.

The academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said Vargas Llosa “is a divinely gifted story-teller,” whose writing touches the reader. “He's one of the big authors in the Spanish-speaking world,” Englund said.

His international breakthrough came with the 1960s novel “The Time of The Hero,” which builds on his experiences from the Peruvian military academy Leoncio Prado. The book was considered controversial in his homeland and a thousand copies were burnt publicly by officers from the academy.