Literati the world over have been waiting with baited breath to find out who this years Nobel Prize for Literature would go to. Political writer Vargas Llosa has taken the prize, which was announced Thursday.
The Peruvian author goes deep into the complexities of power and corruption in Latin America and the awarding officials praised Llosa for his “cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”
Llosa, 74, is one of the most renowned Spanish-speaking writers, preeminent in his field with over 30 novels, plays and essays including “The War of the End of the World.”
The Nobel Prize committee continues a trend
for choosing politically-steeped writers for the much-sought-after award.
Llosa, who was told at 5am in New York that he
had been awarded the prize commented that “It was a grand surprise…a good way
to start a New York
day.”
Llosa is currently in the US to teach a semester of Latin Studies at renowned Princeton University. Llosa is the first Spanish language author to win the prize in 20 years, after Octavio Paz of Mexico claimed the prize in 1990. Llosa once ran for President in Peru, and is extremely outspoken politically.
His novels aim to explore the experience of politics for ordinary people. He has further stated in a 2002 interview with the Times that “I don’t think there is a great fiction that is not an essential contradiction of the world as it is.”
