Great Regulars: [Mario Vargas Llosa] has often returned

to the struggle in Latin America between freedom and authoritarianism. His huge, sprawling Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) traces how the dictatorship of Peru's Manuel Odría destroyed the personal lives of Peruvians. In War at the End of the World (1981), on a revolt in Brazil, and in The Feast of the Goat (2000), he depicts the regime and assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.

Vargas Llosa said yesterday, "We in Latin America have not solved yet basic problems, like freedom, like stable institutions, tolerance, coexistence and diversity. We still have an atrocious tradition of totalitarianism and brutality in politics. So it is very difficult for a Latin American writer to avoid these issues. . . . But more and more we have in Latin America the kind of consensus that permits democracy to flourish." He praised newly democratic governments in Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile, and lamented the authoritarians of Cuba and Venezuela.

from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Mario Vargas Llosa, visiting professor at Princeton, wins Nobel Prize in literature

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