Honorary Graduate Mario Vargas Llosa has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The award was given "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat."

Mario's connections with Warwick go back a long way. He has visited the University on a number of occasions since 1978, with all visits organised by the School of Comparative American Studies (CAS) and the Humanities Research Centre (HRC). In March 2002 he was the HRC Visiting Fellow, in 2004 the University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate, and in 2006 CAS and the HRC organised a 70th birthday international conference for him, which he attended with his wife and children.

Professor John King, CAS, who has translated several of Mario's works said:

"Mario Vargas Llosa has been a good friend to Warwick for more than thirty years. The range and quality of his work is extraordinary. The Swedish Academy has called him a 'divine story teller'. He is also a very prominent public intellectual. The Nobel Prize is richly deserved."

About Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario is one of Latin America's best-known writers and most of his works have been translated into English. He has written many novels, works of short fiction, plays, pieces of literary criticism and political commentaries.

He started his working life as a crime reporter in Lima, publishing his first novel, The Time of the Hero in 1963, which received immediate international recognition. In the late 1950s Vargas Llosa came to Europe and has worked as a visiting professor in many American and European universities.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, the author has received several prestigious literary awards, including the Rómulo Gallegos International Literature Prize (1967), Peruvian National Prize (1967), Critics' Annual Prize for Theatre (1981), Prince of Asturias Prize (1986) and Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1994).

Writers at Warwick Archive

You can hear Mario Vargas Llosa discussing his novel "The Feast of the Goat" on the Writers at Warwick Audio Archive.