Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa wins 2010 Nobel for literature

The Swedish Academy has chosen Peruvian-born writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa for the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.

"Mario Vargas Llosa, who has chronicled struggles for power, won the 2010 Nobel prize for literature," the awarding committee announced today.

Vargas Llosa received the award "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat," the committee said in a statement today.

Vargas Llosa, who made his international breakthrough with the novel "The Time of the Hero" in 1966, is the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel since Octavio Paz won it in 1990.

"Peruvian by birth and a truly international citizen, the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature embraces multiple genres (novels, plays, essays), and politics too, in his commitment to social change."

Vargas Llosa, who has lectured and taught at universities in Latin America, the United States and Europe, is also a noted journalist and essayist, the committee said.