STOCKHOLM, (Reuters) – Peruvian writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, a chronicler of human struggles against authoritarianism in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature yesterday.
A leading member of a generation of writers behind the resurgence in Latin American literature in the 1960s, Vargas Llosa was a champion of the left in his youth and later evolved into an outspoken conservative, a shift that infuriated much of Latin America’s leftist intelligentsia.
“I hope they gave it to me more for my literary work and not my political opinions,” the 74-year-old author said at a news conference in New York.
“I think Latin American literature deals with power and politics and this was inevitable. We in Latin America have not solved basic problems such as freedom,” Vargas Llosa said.
“Literature is an expression of life and you can’t eradicate politics from life,” he added.
The Swedish Academy awarding the 10 million crown ($1.5 million) prize said Vargas Llosa had been chosen “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”
The author of more than 30 novels, plays and essays, Vargas Llosa made his international breakthrough in the 1960s with “The Time of the Hero”, a novel about cadets at a military academy in Lima. Many of his works are built on his experiences of life in Peru in the late 1940s and the 1950s.
Long tipped as a potential winner, Vargas Llosa is Latin America’s first Nobel winner for literature since Mexico’s Octavio Paz took the prize in 1990. He joins winners from the region that include Pablo Neruda of Chile and Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez — who Vargas Llosa famously punched in 1976.
The public punch is at the center of one of the literary world’s best-known feuds. The two friends ceased speaking to each other afterward and for decades the reason for the fight has been a mystery.
A photographer who captured Garcia Marquez — and his black eye — wrote about the incident years later and suggested it concerned Vargas Llosa’s wife.
In the 1970s, Vargas Llosa, a one-time supporter of the Cuban revolution, denounced Fidel Castro’s communism, maddening many of his leftist literary colleagues like Garcia Marquez.
The writer said he never had any desire to become a politician when he ran for president in 1990 as Peru battled high inflation and the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. He lost to Alberto Fujimori, who defeated inflation and the guerrillas but is now in jail for human rights abuses.
Frustrated after his unsuccessful election run, Vargas Llosa went to live in Spain but remains influential in Latin America as an acclaimed writer and columnist.
Vargas Llosa said he took out Spanish citizenship because Fujimori sought to strip him of his Peruvian nationality.
Vargas Llosa has become a staunch supporter of free markets and has harshly criticized a new wave of populist left-wing leaders led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Yesterday, the writer repeated his criticism of dictatorship, both left-wing and right-wing, and praised Brazil and Uruguay as leftist governments that respect democracy.
“What is a step back is that we still have Cuba and Venezuela, though I think this authoritarian, antidemocratic current is losing popular support,” he said in New York.
Vargas Llosa said he was happy to see the opposition advance in recent congressional elections in Venezuela.
STORYTELLER
The Nobel committee woke up Vargas Llosa with the news before dawn in the United States, where he is teaching Latin American literature at Princeton University for a semester.
Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, praised the writer’s story-telling prowess and said he was on of the great authors in the Spanish-speaking world.
“He has a number of masterpieces in narration because essentially he’s a narrator, he’s a storyteller. My goodness, what a storyteller!” Englund said in Stockholm.