Great Regulars: "It is a moral obligation of a writer

in Latin America to be involved in civic activities," Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once said.

Words he has taken seriously.

In six decades of public life, Vargas Llosa has had more second acts than Norman Mailer: he was a candidate for Peru's presidency, a political columnist, the director of International PEN, a crusading journalist, even a neo-liberal proponent of the free market. But the sentence is most aptly applied to Llosa's work as a novelist, for which he won the Nobel Prize today.

It's a phenomenal choice.

from John Freeman: NPR: 'Cartographer of Power' Vargas Llosa A Phenomenal Choice for Nobel

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