Mario Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Prize

From Nobelprize.org’s tweet:

2010 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa, a truly international citizen, committed to social change #nobelprize

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I have a vivid memory of reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s, The War of the End of the World in a cafe in Seattle. It was a summer day and I was sitting alone when the waitress came up to me with my order and asked what I was reading. I don’t recall what I said, just that I showed her the cover of the book–

and that we ended up chatting for several minutes about Latin American authors. Books can do that, get two strangers talking, especially when they’re as brilliant as The War of the End of the World.