The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (born 1936) "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.

"The world recognizes the intelligence and the will of freedom and democracy by Vargas Llosa and it is an act of enormous justice" said Alan García, president of Peru.

"[5] Novelist William Boyd paid tribute to "a great chroncicler of the highs and lows of our carnal and passionate adventures as human beings".

[6] The prize was also celebrated by Bernard Kouchner, foreign minister of France, Felipe Calderón, president of Mexico, and the King of Spain Juan Carlos, among others.

"We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," he argued.

"Vargas Llosa's novels never bow to diktat; they are polyphonic and open to interpretation, emphasising the diversity of Latin America's social and ethnic patterns.

"So he has fought for freedom of expression and for human rights regardless of geography, and has done so with a passion for liberty and with political courage and common sense – these not always in harmony in important writers.