The Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. The 74-year-old has written over 30 books, including novels, plays, and essays like The Time of the Hero and The Feast of the Goat (the latter shows up frequently in Barnes & Noble displays across America). Vargas Llosa, who ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990, is the first South American to win the prize since Gabriel Garcia Marquez did in 1982. (An American has not won since Toni Morrison did in 1993, though Cormac McCarthy was rumored to be a contender this year.) The Swedish body that presents the Nobel complimented Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” Vargas Llosa, who found out about the prize while in New York — he’s teaching at Princeton for the semester — is reportedly “very happy” about the honor (and surely the $1.5 million prize that goes with it), and likely already percolating on his big, upcoming speech. [NYT]