This month’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature was a man I remember first encountering in the fall of 1992. My wife Susan and I were standing in the senior common room in Harvard’s Quincy House when one other person came into the room. He walked over to Susan, stuck out his hand, and said “Vargas Llosa.”

Not everyone would have known, but Susan immediately recognized the name of a Latin American literary lion. Mario Vargas Llosa went on the give a talk to common room members that fall. Unfortunately, on that occasion he did not talk about writing, a subject I would like to have heard him discuss. Instead he told us about running for president of Peru, and failing to get elected.