Llosa Nobel literature

The writer was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1999.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the acclaimed Peruvian novelist and writer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. (A biography and extensive multilingual bibliography accompany the announcement.)

Harvard recognized Llosa—who served as a visiting professor of Latin American studies during the 1992-1993 academic year—by conferring upon him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at Commencement in 1999 (with photo). As it happens, Llosa is visiting at Princeton this year.

In introducing Llosa then, the provost said:

We now recognize a novelist of international renown, who has been called "the national conscience of his native Peru."

Literature, he has said, is "fire"—"a form of permanent insurrection."

And so it is that his own works, in incandescent prose, challenge established structures of authority, while exploring the chasm between archaic and modern, and the complex ambiguity of human experience.

His twelve novels, honored across more than four decades, draw on his own varied and eventful life.

He attended military academy as a young man, and later studied literature in Lima and Madrid.

His professional pursuits, besides that of novelist, have included journalist, broadcaster, essayist, critic, playwright, film director, professor, and advocate of free expression.

In 1990, as leader of the reformist Liberty Movement party, he finished second in a vigorous campaign for the presidency of Peru—what he called "the most dangerous job in the world."

Two years later, Harvard welcomed him as the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies.

His fiction plumbs the turbulent experience of the nation he has called "the country of a thousand faces," probing the collision of cultures in his homeland -- with stories that aim, in his phrase, to "open [the] heart more forcefully than fear or love."

The mission of literature, he tells us, is "to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep [us] in a constant state of dissatisfaction with [ourselves]."

We honor a novelist who keeps us from complacency, Mario Vargas Llosa.

The honorary-degree citation read:

Stirring storyteller and impassioned defender of democratic ideals, he fuels his imagination on the perplexity of reality, 
in quest of contradictory truths.

You might also like

Bringing Korean Stories to Life

Composer Julia Riew writes the musicals she needed to see.

Being Undocumented in America

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing aims to challenge assumptions. 

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Most popular

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts teaches the value of immersive attention

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Jodie Foster Honored at Radcliffe Day 2025

The actress and director discussed her film career and her transformative time at Yale.

Explore More From Current Issue

Man in gray sweater standing in hallway with colorful abstract art on wall.

How Do Single-Celled Organisms Learn and Remember?

A Harvard neuroscientist’s quest to model memory

Renaissance portrait of young man thought to be Christoper Marlowe with light beard, wearing ornate black coat with gold buttons and red patterns.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Illustration of scientists injecting large syringe with mitochondria into human heart.

Do Mitochondria Hold the Power to Heal?

From Alzheimer’s to cancer, this tiny organelle might expand treatment options.