74-year-old Peruvian-Spanish author Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy announced earlier today. Llosa, a novelist, playwright, politician, and essayist, is perhaps best known for his novels, which include Conversation in the Cathedral, The Green House, and The Time of the Hero.
The Academy praised him for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat," and for bringing Latin American literature, and particularly a Peruvian outlook, onto the world stage.
In an interview with January Magazine the interviewer points to Vargas Llosa's assertion that a good novel should "enhance and amplify life." The writer, who had just finished his novel The Feast of the Goat, which takes place in the Trujillo-ruled Dominican Republic, speaks about life under a dictatorship. "Humans must resist," he says, "especially at the beginning. Later it is harder to resist once the system is in place. But it is always possible."
On democracy, he told the interviewer, "When you live in a democratic society — with pluralism, a free press — you lose perspective and don't remember this is the privilege of a very small portion of the world"
Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 in Peru and published his first novel in 1963. Politically active, Vargos Llosa bid unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency in 1990, and, following the defeat, became a Spanish citizen. His view of the world–part journalist, part novelist, part politician–enhances both the weight of his literary work and its impact.
The name of the prize winner is a heavily guarded secret until the moment it is announced, but that doesn't stop readers worldwide from speculating about the shortlist. This year, it included usual suspects like Korean poet Ko Un and Syrian poet Adonis (who seems to be a perpetual near-winner), as well as the satirical Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o and American songwriter Bob Dylan.
Some place monetary bets on the prize. The odds for Vargas Llosa, according to online betting site Ladbrokes, were 25/1.
