I like science fiction but it's felt for a while that I've read everything good. Recently, I've found myself reading a lot of historical fiction (anti-science fiction?). The two genres are quite similar in that they both examine how humans behave in weird or unfamiliar settings. For example, Russia in Tolstoy's time feels more different to me than an awful lot of science fiction.
Vargas Llosa's "The War of the End of the World" is set in the wilds of 19th century Brazil, and it's brilliant. It's one of my favourite novels. I found "The Time of the Hero" fascinating but I can't remember if I enjoyed it. It's about hazing rituals in Peruvian military school. I tried to read "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," which is set in more modern times, but I didn't get very far.
I always thought that the Nobel prize winners are always very abstract. There are better awards to look at for examples of books you actually want to read...
"one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency"
Think of it as the more technical academy awards. A movie that gets the Oscar for best sound editing might not be a great movie or a box-office hit, but still deserve the award.
But even if the Oscar for Best Sound Editing goes to a terrible and unpopular movie which happens to have good sound editing (e.g. Pearl Harbor, 2001) then there's still a lot that can be learned about sound editing from that movie. You can, for instance, hire the sound editor from Pearl Harbor to do the sound editing on a good film.
I'm not sure what the authors of mainstream fiction can learn from Harold Pinter, though.
I enjoyed some of his books, but pop fiction is unlikely to win that award any time soon. :) And no, Paulo != Pablo, but it's an axiom that if a Brazilian becomes popular enough in the Spanish-speaking part of Latin America, he or she will eventually acquire a hispanicized nickname.
Just for the sake of having some balance in the opinions here (I'm not really willing to go into any flame war) I'd like to state that in my opinion Paulo Coehlo is a bad writer, by which I mean that a) he has a poor style of writing, b) his books don't provide any serious value for the reader.
To end on a positive note I recommend anyone to read "Master & Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov, a masterpiece that for some reasons isn't as popular as it should be (in the western world at least).
Even the US has more Spanish-speaking people than Spain.
However, Spain is still very influential in the development of the language. The "Real Academia de La Lengua" dictates the rules, and there's a network of "Instituto Cervantes" throughout the world. There's even one in Chicago, where I live now.
I don't know if you are being serious, but the spanish language is defined by the R.A.E, and it is influenced by other national academies, so it is more or less supposed to be country-neutral. If, say, peruvians speak closer to R.A.E's spanish than spaniards, then they are the ones speaking proper spanish. It is also worth noting that for many spaniards the language we call "spanish" is not their first language.
Say 'cucumber'. The sound of the first syllable is very different from the second, even though both are written the same.
Say 'stake' and 'steak'. Different graphs for the same phonemes.
Say 'E as in elephant'. Two different sounds for 'e'.
etc.
Present day English is so bad that written language is divorced from spoken language, but it is not bad enough to unite all speakers behind a spelling reform.
Vargas Llosa's "The War of the End of the World" is set in the wilds of 19th century Brazil, and it's brilliant. It's one of my favourite novels. I found "The Time of the Hero" fascinating but I can't remember if I enjoyed it. It's about hazing rituals in Peruvian military school. I tried to read "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," which is set in more modern times, but I didn't get very far.