Mario Vargas Llosa at the 92nd Street Y

http://www.92Y.org/Poetry

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa is the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy praised him "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." He is the first South American to win the Prize since Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982).

Mr. Vargas Llosa has visited the 92Y Poetry Center many times over the years. In a 2007 appearance, he read from his latest novel, The Bad Girl, and took questions from the audience. In this excerpt, he discusses the impact of living abroad on his career as a writer, as well as his early reactions, while he was still abroad, to the political upheaval which was taking place in Latin America in the 1950s and 60s.

Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.