Peru`s Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Literature Prize
Baku, November 24 (AZERTAC). The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the Peruvian novelist, journalist and politician Mario Vargas Llosa, a dark horse candidate who is equally well-known for his forays into politics, according to VOANews.
Mario Vargas Llosa received little attention in the speculation that preceded Thursday`s announcement, when predictions focused on writers from South Korea, Kenya and the United States. And the award will do little to diminish the prize-awarding Swedish Academy`s reputation for selecting overtly political writers.
The Academy`s citation honors the 74-year-old author for what it called “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual`s resistance, revolt and defeat.”
Vargas Llosa first became a literary sensation in the 1960s. The Time of the Hero, his semi-autobiographical first novel published in 1963, is set among cadets in a Lima military academy. He was just past his thirtieth birthday when he wrote his tour de force Conversation in the Cathedral, in which the protagonist investigates his father`s involvement in the killing of an infamous Peruvian gangster, learning in the process how the country`s dictatorship maintains its hold on power. A prolific writer who defies easy categorization, Vargas Llosa`s novels include historical works, political thrillers and even comedies and murder mysteries. Immediately after announcing the award, Peter Englund, secretary of the Swedish academy praised Vargas Llosa`s power and range as a novelist.
“He`s a storyteller, basically a narrator. But what a storyteller. His books have a very complex structure, with shifting points of perspective and shifting time levels,” he said. “There`s much dialogue, but where the dialogue sort of fades in and fades out, criss-crossing several different time planes. He is a very versatile author, producing not just these great big books about Latin America and its dilemmas, but he has written in practically every genre there is.”
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