Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature today. The first South American to be awarded the honor since 1982.
“The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose deeply political work vividly examines the perils of power and corruption in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.”
Read the full story at the New York Times and most other major news outlets.
This is a great honor for Vargas Llosa and I hope it will spark some interest in reading and literature in Peru, where average Peruvians in my observation read very little.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Foto (c) Sara Krulwich, The New York Times
Life in Peru 
It might not prompt any more reading…but I bet you’ll see a lot more pirated versions of Vargas Llosa’s work for sale by street vendors!
🙂
I guess you know a little about Peru. Maybe you don’t know our country, our people,our culture. Go to the public libraries, check quilca avenue or avenida grau were are located the stqnds of the pirate booksellers. I’ve been to those places or to the boksellers stands inside or outside the public and the private universities and I saw more pepople purchasing books over there than the few doing that on Barnes and noble or borders.
You should know that our country has one very diverse and interesting literature our poetry is awesome if you’ll read spanish try Cesar Vallejo, Jose Maria Eguren, Cesar Moro, Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, Jose Santos Chocano, Martin Adan, Blanca Varela. Eielson. Antonio Cisneros, Arturo Corcuera, Javier Heraud, Mariella Dreyfus, Jorge Pimentel, Carlos German Belli, Rocio Silva, Magdalena Chocano, Rosella Di Paolo. Domingo de Ramos, Monserrat Alvarez etc etc etc and I just mentioned a few of our poets
Victor,
Thanks for your comment. I’m sure Peru does have great literature and poetry – which I wish I had more time to explore myself.
My comment about reading in Peru was simply based on my personal observation during the 1-2 years that I was teaching ESL here in Cusco. The students simply did not read much and the institute didn’t encourage reading either. We once attended a workshop where the presenter claimed Peru ranks low in reading, I don’t know all the sources of his info, but it seemed reasonable at the time.