Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa wins 2010 Nobel literature prize (Roundup)

By Lennart Simonsson Oct 7, 2010, 14:24 GMT

Stockholm - Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was Thursday awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature 'for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat.'

Vargas Llosa told Peruvian and Spanish media that his first thought on hearing the Swedish Academy's announcement was that it was a joke.

'I still don't believe it,' he said, according Spanish daily El Mundo.

'My name had not even been mentioned for years,' the 74-year-old author told Peru's Radio RPP.

The head of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, earlier told journalists Vargas Llosa appeared 'very, very happy' when contacted in New York earlier in the day.

Vargas Llosa who was born in the Peruvian city of Arequipa has lived and lectured in several countries. His novels include The Time of the Hero (1963), The Green House (1966), Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1986), The Feast of the Goat (2000) and The Bad Girl (2006).

He is currently teaching a course on the techniques of the novel and a class on Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges at Princeton University in the United States.

Ruben Gallo, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures at Princeton, on Thursday called Vargas Llosa 'the most respected and accomplished novelist in Latin America.'

His international breakthrough came with The Time of the Hero, translated into English in 1966, according to the Swedish Academy.

The novel was, however, considered controversial in Peru, with 1,000 copies burned at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy.

Englund said Vargas Llosa's work is in a similar vein to that of several authors the Peruvian admires - including Victor Hugo or Albert Camus - pointing to Vargas Llosa's 'interest in society.'

'His view is that authors should not just provide good entertainment, but also show the way... (and) speak the truth,' Englund told Swedish radio after the announcement.

In 1990, Vargas Llosa unsuccessfully ran for president of Peru.

Some two dozen of his works have been translated into English, including the well-known Conversation in the Cathedral and The War of the End of the World.

Englund told reporters that The Feast of the Goat - a novel about the final day in the life of Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo - was a good starting point for a new reader of the author.

Vargas Llosa is also noted for his essays and journalism, having for instance contributed columns to the Spanish daily El Pais.

The last Latin American author to win the Nobel prize for literature was Octavio Paz of Mexico in 1990.

The literature prize was the fourth Nobel to be awarded this year, with prizes given out earlier this week in medicine, physics and chemistry.

The Nobel prize for peace is due to be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway.

The prizes, worth 10 million kronor (1.5 million dollars), were endowed by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

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