It was announced in a press release on Thursday Oct. 7 2010 that Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has received the Nobel Prize in LIterature for 2010 for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." This year's prize money has been set at an amount of 10 million Swedish kroner (SEK).
Llosa is the author of a multitude of essays, stories and novels including Death in the Andes and Conversation in the Cathedral. Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936 in Arequipa, Peru. He once had a failed bid for president of Peru in 1990 and has opposed the leftist governments in Latin American such as Cuba.
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 1901 to "a person who has produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" Past Literature Nobel Laureates include authors such as John M. Coetzee, Seamus Heaney, Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl Buck. The Nobel Prize is named for its founding benefactor the Swedish Alfred Nobel who, before he died, signed his will to leave a great portion of his wealth to establish a prize to individuals who "have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" in the categories of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The prizes were to be award by the Swedish Academy for Sciences, The Caroline Institute in Stockholm and the Academy in Stockholm and a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian Sorting. No extra consideration was to be given to Scandinavian candidates.
