Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize

The genre-bending and politically active author was awarded by the Nobel foundation for “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.”

Born in 1936, Llosa became a leading voice in Latin American literature. His first novel, The Time of the Hero (1962), is a semi-autobiographical coming of age tale drawing from Llosa’s time in a military school in Lima, while subsequent novels also dealt with the military and political ramifications of the country, though never a uniform style: his generic sweep spans mystery, erotica, historical fiction and literary criticism – his 1977 novel, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a comedy loosely based on his first marriage, and was made into a 1990 Hollywood film starring Barbara Hershey, Peter Falk and Keanu Reeves.

Having once been a supporter of the Cuban revolution, Llosa denounced communism in the 1970s – angering fans and literary contemporaries in the process – and even ran for Peruvian presidency in 1990, advocating centre-right politics.

In an interview with TheBookseller.com, Lee Brackstone, Llosa’s publisher at Faber, hailed the author as “a writer of enormous range, passion and insight.”