Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Here’s more about Llosa (pictured, via) from the Nobel site: “[he was awarded] for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.”
UPDATE: eBookNewser has more about the author’s conspicuous lack of eBooks. Picador will reprint 10 paperbacks by the Nobel winner. Finally, Maud Newton points us to the novelist’s Charlie Rose interview.
In a 2002 Guardian interview, the novelist explained his commitment to writing: “The writer’s job is to write with rigour, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.”
Yesterday, the gambling site Ladbrokes had Cormac McCarthy, Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Japanese author Haruki Murakami with the best odds of winning the prize.