Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel literature prize [October 07 2010]

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Spanish-speaking world who once ran for president in his homeland, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature today. The Swedish Academy said it honored the 74-year-old author "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individuals 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 worlds most distinguished literary honor. The academys permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said Vargas Llosa "is a divinely gifted story-teller," whose writing touches the reader. "He is 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. Vargas Llosa is the first South American winner of the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) Nobel Prize in literature since it was awarded to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982.

In the previous six years, the academy rewarded five Europeans and one Turk, sparking criticism that it was too euro-centric. Last years award went to German writer Herta Mueller. Englund said Vargas Llosa was in New York on Thursday when was told by telephone that he had won the prize. He is teaching this semester at Princeton University in New Jersey.