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Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has been chosen for the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, announced the awards committee on Thursday in Stockholm, Sweden.
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The Swedish Academy which manages the Nobel Prize stated that the award goes to him for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."
Vargas Llosa began his writing career in 1963 with his ground-breaking novel "The Time of the Hero", followed by "Conversation in the Cathedral" (1969), "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" (1977) and "The Feast of the Goat" (2000).
Born in 1936 in the provincial city of Arequipa, Vargas Llosa worked initially as a crime reporter for the Lima newspaper La Crónica when he was 15. He moved to France in 1959 and worked as a Spanish teacher, journalist and as a visiting professor in many European cities and universities before returning to Peru in 1975.
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Back home, he took keen interest in politics and was also hosting a talk show on Peruvian television for some time. He became an ardent supporter of the conservative government of Fernando Belaúnde Terry from 1980-1985. He was reportedly offered to become prime minister in 1984 but he declined the offer.
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In 1987 he led protests against the country's move to nationalize financial system. He contested against Albert Fujimoro in 1990 presidential elections and lost in the second round. But his Cuban friend and writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante characterized his defeat as a gain for literature. "Literature is eternity, politics mere history," he said. True to his words, Vargas Llosa lost politics but not the literary honor. The Nobel prize finally came his way.
