{"id":5974,"date":"2010-10-07T11:29:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T15:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=5974"},"modified":"2010-10-08T12:23:41","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T16:23:41","slug":"mario-vargas-llosa-wins-the-nobel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/07\/mario-vargas-llosa-wins-the-nobel\/","title":{"rendered":"Mario Vargas Llosa Wins the Nobel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photograph by Sophie Bassouls.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Nobel Prize committee announced this morning that Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 award for literature, praising him \u201cfor his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual\u2019s resistance, revolt, and defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1990, The Paris Review<\/em> published an astonishing interview<\/a> with Vargas Llosa. Then a friend to both Neruda and Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, he expressed an abiding belief in the need for a literature that dissolves politics into its narrative fabric and offers imaginative solutions to economic and social problems. Writers, Vargas Llosa felt, should not seek to distance themselves from the political sphere:<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s crucial that writers show\u2014because like all artists, they sense this more strongly than anyone\u2014the importance of freedom for the society as well as for the individual. Justice, which we all wish to rule, should never become disassociated from freedom; and we must never accept the notion that freedom should at certain times be sacrificed in the name of social justice or national security, as totalitarians from the extreme left and reactionaries from the extreme right would have us do. Writers know this because every day they sense the degree to which freedom is necessary for creation, for life itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hardly imagining, as an adolescent, that he would be able to devote himself to writing full time\u2014\u201ctoo much of a luxury for a Latin American,\u201d he explained, \u201cespecially a Peruvian\u201d\u2014Vargas Llosa planned to pursue a career in law or journalism. We\u2019re grateful that he reconsidered. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nobel Prize committee announced this morning that Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 award for literature, praising him \u201cfor his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual\u2019s resistance, revolt, and defeat.\u201d In the fall of 1990, The Paris Review published an astonishing interview with Vargas Llosa. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[1013,1016,1015,1018,1014,1017],"class_list":["post-5974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-2010-nobel-for-literature","tag-art-of-fiction","tag-garcia-marquez","tag-latin-america","tag-mario-vargas-llosa","tag-peru"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMario Vargas Llosa Wins the Nobel by Nicole Rudick<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 7, 2010 \u2013 The Nobel Prize committee announced this morning that Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 award for literature, praising him \u201cfor his\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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