Peruvian-born writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, a chronicler of human struggles against brutal authority in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature on Thursday.
The committee awarding the 10-million crown ($1,50-million) prize said Vargas Llosa won “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat”.
Vargas Llosa, who has both Spanish and Peruvian citizenship, made his international breakthrough in 1966 with the novel The Time of the Hero, a story of murder at a military academy.
He is the first Latin American winner for literature since Mexico’s Octavio Paz in 1990 and he joins Latin winners such as Garbriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia and Pablo Neruda of Chile.
In his works, Vargas Llosa built on his experiences of life in Peru in the late 1940s and the 1950s.
A conservative who was criticised by many contemporary Latin American writers for abandoning leftist ideals, he ran for president in Peru in 1990. He lost to Alberto Fujimori, who later had to flee the country and was subsequently convicted of various crimes.
“For years I haven’t thought about the Nobel prize at all. They didn’t mention me in recent years so I didn’t expect it,” Vargas Llosa was quoted by aColombian radio station as saying.
“It’s been a surprise, very nice, but a surprise nevertheless.”
Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, said the award was overdue.
“This is a great day, because the world has recognized the visionary intelligence of Mario Vargas Llosa and his libertarian and democratic ideals.”
Packing a punch
Vargas Llosa is at the centre of one of the literary world’s most famous feuds.
In 1976, Vargas Llosa punched his friend and fellow writer Garcia Marquez in public.The two ceased speaking to each other and for decades the reason behind the fight has been a mystery.
A photographer who captured Garcia Marquez — and his black eye — wrote about the incident in 2007 and suggested it concerned Vargas Llosa’s wife.
Vargas Llosa has been tipped for years to win the prize.
This year he was a 25-1 outsider, behind American novelist and favourite Cormac McCarthy and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, according to British betting firm Ladbrokes.
“We’re breathing an enormous sigh of relief,” Ladbrokes spokesperson said David Williams said.
“We saw more money bet on the contest this year than in its entire history. We’ll send a crate of champagne to the winner because he’s helped us dodge a massive payout.”
The Nobel committee reached Vargas Llosa before dawn in the United States.
“He’s actually having a two-month stint there in Princeton teaching, so I was sort of embarrassed for phoning him so early. But he had been up since 5 o’clock preparing a lecture for Princeton,” Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, said. “He was elated. He was very, very moved.”
Englund bubbled over in his praise of the writer: “He has a number of masterpieces in narration because essentially he’s a narrator, he’s a storyteller. My goodness, what a storyteller!”
In The Feast of the Goat, a 49-year-old woman returns to the Dominican Republic, haunted by memories of her childhood when the nation was led by brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo.
The story tells of her efforts to overcome a traumatic past:
“Were you right to come back? You’ll be sorry, Urania… returning to the island you swore you’d never set foot on again…,” he writes.
“To prove to yourself you can walk along the streets of this city that is no longer yours, travel through this foreign country and not have it provoke sadness, nostalgia, hatred, bitterness, rage in you.”
This was the fourth of this year’s Nobel prizes, following awards for medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday. — Reuters