Peruvian-Spanish author Mario Vargas Llosa won the 2010 Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, the Swedish Academy said.

The 74-year-old author, a one-time presidential candidate, is best known for works such as "Conversation in the Cathedral" and "The Feast of the Goat" but is also a prolific journalist.

Announcing the award, the academy hailed "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat."

Vargas Llosa has won a string of major literary awards, including the most prestigious of all for a Spanish-language author, the Cervantes Prize, and had often been tipped to win the Nobel prize.

Born in Arequipa, Peru, Vargas Llosa grew up with his mother and grandfather in the city of Cochabama in Bolivia before moving back to Peru in 1946.