I learnt from Mario Vargas Llosa's letters ...

On Sunday, eagerly anticipating the news about the Nobel Prize announcements, I wrote that in literature I am rooting for Mario Vargas Llosa .... need I say I am excited this morning :)

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced.
Vargas Llosa was chosen "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individuals resistance, revolt, and defeat," the academy said.

One year, I used one of his books for a class.  Yes, I did.  But, it wasn't a fiction work of Llosa's ... it was his Letters to a young novelist ... now, I wasn't teaching any fiction-writing class; it was one of the ways in which I attempted to convey to students how to do research, how to write, how to think through ... That was the only time I used this book by Llosa because it was quickly clear to me--much to my disappointment--that not one student cared about it ...