The Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the U.S. Department of State wishes to offer its congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa for receiving the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. We join many readers in the Western Hemisphere and around the world in saying that Mr. Vargas Llosa’s novels, stories, and non-fiction writing have been a source of great enjoyment and enlightenment for more than a half century. His brilliant style and uncanny ability to reveal the inner workings of society and of the human spirit have earned him an indelible place among the masters of the Spanish language. The body of his work is, moreover, a testament to the cultural and spiritual vitality of the Spanish-speaking world from which he comes.

Mr. Vargas Llosa has long been a friend of the United States and his literary work has been widely appreciated here. In 1987, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy and Institutes of Arts and Letters, and he has received honorary degrees from many of our universities. He has also taught at several leading U.S. academic institutions, including Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, and Princeton Universities. He is spending the current academic semester as the 2010 Distinguished Visitor in the Program in Latin American Studies at Princeton, where his literary papers are housed in the University’s Firestone Library. We could not be more proud that Mr. Vargas Llosa learned of his Nobel Prize while in New York City.

Once again, our congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa, his family, and to Peru and Latin America.