Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974), born in Guatemala, spent much of his life elsewhere---in France, writing, and in France, Argentina, El Salvador, and Mexico as Guatemala's diplomatic representative.    His work was more widely known in Europe and Latin America than the United States prior to 1967, the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.   His major works are: El señor presidente, 1946-El Señor Presidente, 1963, (Social criticism);  Hombres de maíz, 1949 - Men of Maize, 1975, (Social morality); his "banana trilogy" made up of  Viento fuerte, 1950 - Strong Wind, 1968; El papa verde, 1954 - The Green Pope, 1971; and Los ojos de los enterrados, 1960 - The Eyes of the Interred, 1973, (Social criticism); and Mulata de tal, 1963 - Mulata, 1967, (Allegory)  Two details: (1) " Men of Maize is, without a doubt, Asturias' most controversial novel as well as his best", wrote Frank N. Magill, editor of a critique of Latin American writing  (2) "Although it is related to his other works, Strong Wind can be read profitably without recourse to the other two books of the trilogy."  Magill. 

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa (b.1936) was the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat."   Llosa, whose novels illuminate politics and culture, was the first South American writer to win the prize since 1982 (Gabriel García Márquez).

La ciudad y los perros, 1963            The Time of the Hero (English translation, 1966)                    Bildungsroman

La casa verde, 1966                         The Green House (English translation, 1968)                         Social criticism

Conversación en la catedral, 1969    Conversation in the Cathedral (English translation, 1975)     Social criticism

La tía Julia y el escribidor,1977          Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (English translation, 1982)     Comic realism

La guerra del fin del mundo, 1981      The War of the End of the World (English translation, 1984)  Historical realism

 El hablador, 1987                               The Storyteller (English translation, 1989)                               Philosophical realism                                                                   

Colombian Gabriel GarcÍa Márquez (b. 1928) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.   

His major fiction works are:

                     El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, 1961 - Nobody Writes to the Colonel          Ironic

                    Cien años de soledad, 1967 - One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970                    Magical Realism                                 

                    El otoño  del patriarca, 1975 -  The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975                          Satire   

                    Crónica de una muerte anunciada - Chronicle of a Death Foretold , 1982            Novel

                    El amor en los tiempos del cólera, 1985 - Love in a Time of Cholera,  1988        Novel

     Two other Latin American literary artists, both Chileans,  also won the Nobel, but for poetry.   Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) "always thought of herself as a teacher first and a poet second, even after she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945".  Her published works date from 1922 to 1967.  

     Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), who was an essayist, translator, playwright, and novelist as well as a poet, was the 1971 winner..  Before his death in 1973, he had become one of the most widely read poets not only in Latin America but also internationally.  Indeed, one of Neruda's  most popular works was translated from Spanish into more than twenty languages.  In Latin America,  the words, "The Poet" came to mean Pablo Neruda.