Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature 2010 on Thursday. This was in honor of one of the most acclaimed and respected authors in the Spanish-speaking part of the world, as well as a political activist widely outspoken, once a presidential candidate in his tumultuous nation.

Nobel Prize in Literature Winner 2010

The 74-year-old Vargas Llosa has more than written 30 novels, essays and plays. In 1995, he had taken the most coveted Spanish literary honor: Cervantes Prize.

Since Gabriel Garcia Marquez had won the 10 million Kronor Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, Vargas Llosa is the second from South America.

Talking to the media, Vargas said that he was quite surprised and hardly expected it, thinking that it was all a joke after he had received a call to that effect.

The literary icon added that its some years since he has heard his name mentioned, and the honor was literary a pleasant and total surprise.

In giving the prize to Llosa, the Swedish Academy expressed it was doing so for the storyteller’s “trenchant images of the individual’s resistant, revolt and defeat” in part. He has been honored also for his aid in evolving the vast art of narration.

Vargas Llosa has been for some time widely mentioned as being a possible candidate for the coveted prize, after he has won some of the most prestigious and respected literary medals on the western world, with his work having been translated into about 31 languages, such as in Arabic, Hebrew, Croatian and Chinese.

Image Credit: Vargas Llosa