Visiting lecturer wins Nobel

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, a distinguished visitor in Princeton’s Program in Latin American Studies, was selected to receive the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature Oct. 7.  

Vargas Llosa, a novelist, essayist, and onetime presidential candidate in Peru, is teaching two courses at Princeton this fall, one on techniques of the novel and the other on Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Vargas Llosa also taught at the University in 1992-93, and his literary papers are housed in Firestone Library.  

In an interview with NobelPrize.org, Vargas Llosa admitted he was “very surprised” by the news, which came via telephone at 5:45 a.m. on one of his nonteaching days. “Writing has been such a fantastic pleasure for me all my life that I cannot believe that I am honored and recompensed for something that has been a recompense in itself,” he said.