October 7th, 2010 / 4:21 pm
Author News
Alec Niedenthal
Author News
Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
The author of more than 30 novels, plays and works of nonfiction, he is known for his expansive language, his alertness to the profound and the profane, and his fierce and dark disdain for tyranny. His books are not without magical touches, but he is more grounded, more a “realist” than fellow Nobel laureate and South American Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Mario Vargas Llosa wins 2010’s Nobel Prize. Thoughts?
I dig Mario’s work. He’s an author able to tackle such varied styles and themes–the colonial alternates with the lyrical in Storyteller, The Scriptwriter and Aunt Julia is a weird and nice romance novel, Death in the Andes reads like an easy detective novel set in the Andes, and The Feast of the Goat gets into a megalomaniac’s brain in a way that feels authentic and unusual for historical fiction. I’m thrilled he’s won.
I dig Mario’s work. He’s an author able to tackle such varied styles and themes–the colonial alternates with the lyrical in Storyteller, The Scriptwriter and Aunt Julia is a weird and nice romance novel, Death in the Andes reads like an easy detective novel set in the Andes, and The Feast of the Goat gets into a megalomaniac’s brain in a way that feels authentic and unusual for historical fiction. I’m thrilled he’s won.
He had become one of those “brilliant authors who never won a Nobel prize”. Totally deserved.
Good choice this time. Go Sweden!
Mario Vargas Llosa gave Gabriel Garcia Marquez a black eye once. Garcia Marquez slept with Mario’s wife.
WTFC
Haven’t read him, but as a public-schooled AMERICAN I’m glad it’s someone whose work is pretty widely translated. And by Natasha Wimmer, no less. Her Bolano is better than Chris Andrews’ Bolano, I think.
http://twitter.com/#search/%23murakaminobelzings
Not fair. She got to translate better books.
Really
I really loved The War At The End Of The World. Beyond that I don’t have anything to add.
I honestly believe Murakami should’ve gotten the Prize.
I had my fingers crossed for Ngugi, for his own work but also because it might have been a boost for Kenyan literature generallyhttp://thechagallposition.blogspot.comhttp://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/
Liu Xiaobo, officially now The Man. some of his poems written from prison: http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/4014/prmID/1502
Whaaaat? Really?
Seriously? Who’s next, Tom Robbins?
Llosa is terrific, in some ways a throwback in terms of his historical fiction, but I still feel Philip Roth is being robbed year after year. it’s as if they gave the prize to Saul Bellow and then were like, okay, we’ve done our American Jewish writer.
Interesting, terrifying intellectual wins Nobel Prize= 16 comments
Tao Lin eats an ‘apple’ = 250 comment flame war
go htmlgiant
Granny Smith? Golden Delicious? A Gravenstein?! Don’t be coy with the details, hubby…
@chubbyhubby
i don’t think there has ever been a more apt time to use the bromide: size doesn’t matter.
ok maybe there have been other times, but if this site were called HTMLGIGANTE, i promise you those numbers would be reversed, and waaay more out of proportion.
Yeah, I honestly do. I hated Murakami in the beginning because The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is probably one of the worst books ever written, m’kay? And, for quite some time, I refused to read anything else by him. Then I happened upon “After the Quake” and really enjoyed his style. Giving him a second chance, I read “Sputnik Sweetheart” and enjoyed that, too. Then I read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and loved it. Same for Norweigan Wood and Kafka on the Shore.
I just think that he does a good job of writing, represents the changing face of Japan’s youth and etc.
What did you like about Kafka on the Shore?
I agree with Scott Raab, who profiled Philip Roth for this month’s Esquire: if there is a single over-looked and dedicated contributor to the literature of the world who is still alive and deserving of the prize, it is Roth.
I liked Kafka on the Shore because of the psychological split-plot .