Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and a former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship.
He is a writer whose commitment to social change is evident in his novels, plays, and essays. In 1990 he was an unsuccessful candidate for president of Peru.
Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally translated as The City and the Dogs), The Green House (La casa verde), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral). He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several from the 1970s, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, have been adapted as feature films.
In 2010 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, ‘for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.’ He also won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award, the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes International Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. He was shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize 2009.
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Background
Between 2005 - 2015, the Man Booker International Prize recognised one writer for their achievement in fiction.
Worth £60,000, the prize was awarded every two years to a living author who had published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.
The winner was chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel and there were no submissions from publishers.
The Man Booker International Prize was different from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlighted one writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. In focusing on overall literary excellence, the judges considered a writer’s body of work rather than a single novel.