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Peruvian-born writer and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, who has chronicled struggles for power, won the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature, the awarding committee said on Thursday, according to the Nobel Prize official website.

The committee said in a statement Vargas Llosa received the award "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."

Vargas Llosa, who made his international breakthrough with the novel "The Time of the Hero" in 1966, is the first Latin American winner for literature since Octavio Paz won in 1990.

His works build on his experiences of life in Peru in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Vargos Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 but lost to Alberto Fujimori, who ultimately had to flee the country and was subsequently convicted of various crimes.
Vargas Llosa, who has lectured and taught at universities in Latin America, the United States and Europe, is also a noted journalist and essayist, the committee said.

The prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.50 million) was the fourth of this year's Nobel prizes, following awards for medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday. The prize will be handed to him December 10 by King Carl XIV Gustaf of Sweden.