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Peruvian, Mario
Vargas Llosa, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Peter Englund, a professor and permanent secretary of the Swedish
Academy, made the announcement on Thursday morning.

The Academy said
the prize was awarded to Llosa “for his cartography of structures of
power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt,
and defeat.”

Born on March 28,
1936, in Arequipa, Peru, Llosa is one of the most acclaimed writers in
the Spanish speaking world with over 30 novels, plays, and essays to
his credit.

Apart from being a
writer, Llosa is also a noted journalist, academic, essayist, and
politician who contested for the Peruvian presidency in 1990. His
interest in professional politics has, however, waned, though elements
of politics are still in his writings.

He has also had a
career in lecturing, teaching in universities in the US, South America,
and Europe. He is currently at Princeton University, New York, where he
was told by telephone on Thursday that he had won the prize.

Llosa’s honour comes 28 years after South America’s last winner of the prize, the renowned Gabriel Garcia Marquez, won in 1982.

‘The Time of the
Hero’; ‘Conversation in the Cathedral’; ‘The War of the End of the
World’; and ‘The Feast of the Goat’ are some of the popular works by
the latest Nobel literature laureate.

Llosa’s works have
been translated into about 31 languages including French, English,
German, Swedish, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Croatian.

His international
breakthrough reportedly came with the 1960s novel, ‘The Time of The
Hero’ which built on his experiences at the Peruvian military academy,
Leoncio Prado. The book was considered controversial in his homeland
and 1,000 copies were burnt publicly by officers from the academy.

The 74-year-old author is the 102 winner of the prize, which has
been awarded since 1901. Four Africans, Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka; South
Africa’s Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee; and Egyptian, Naguib Mafhouz,
are past winners of the prize, which wasn’t awarded on seven occasions.