Bengal Chapter of Indian PEN Congratulates Mario Vargas Llosa and Liu Xiaobo for winning Nobel Prize

Bengal Chapter of Indian PEN center (Kolkata) Congratulates two PEN MEMBERS for their winning Nobel Prize in Literature and peace.



Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature as the academy honored one of the Spanish-speaking world's most acclaimed authors and an activist who once ran for Peru's presidency and famously denounced leftist writers and dictators.
Mr. Vargas Llosa, 74, has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including "Conversation in the Cathedral" and "The Green House." In 1995, he won the Cervantes Prize, the most distinguished literary honor in Spanish.
He is the first South American winner of the prestigious $1.5 million Nobel literature prize since Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez won in 1982 and the first Spanish-language writer to win since Mexico's Octavio Paz in 1990.


We are absolutely delighted that Liu Xiaobo, our Chinese PEN colleague , a literary critic, writer, and political activist who is serving an 11-year sentence in a Chinese prison, is the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
We hope the Chinese authorities receive it--as recognition of the power of its citizens to guide and shape their future in a peaceful way. We ask the citizens and leaders of every nation to urge the Chinese government to honor the award's spirit by setting him and all his imprisoned colleagues free.


"PEN has always stood not only for free expression but also for cultural exchange across nations,"