Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 Speculation

[Salixacaena]

Sure, I'm always open to reading great previously-unknown-to-me Literature, no matter what part of the world or from whom it comes. And I very much would like to come to know these amazing writers whose entire (or almost) bodies of work can be appreciated in its fullness. I even acknowledged this, my ignorance, in what I wrote; I guess I should have said, from the African writers I know, and among those whom I see as prominent candidates this year, I'd say Couto is the most likely to get it.

as for the articles you've provided, I appreciate your bringing them up, but I'm afraid they don't quite answer my question. The washington post one is blatantly a call for literature as a weapon against whatever evil in the world (the article cites many), while saying close to nothing about his actual writing style, his poetics (a word here or there saying his latest novel is a masterpiece and that's it); there is much about his life and his act of resistance of writing in his native language, more of that in the second article, a subtler one, but also focusing on what he writes about, rather than how.

Someone mentioned a few pages ago about the necessity of having written a considerable body of work to winning the Nobel, and in number he has that; when bringing Achebe up, things get more complicated tho. Despite having lived a fairly long life, dying in 2013 at 82, his fifth and last novel came in 1987, so perhaps he was in contention in the late 80's together with Soyinka, but then the gap became too great... Back to Thiong'o, he'll most likely remain one of those writers people come up with every year when they think of Nobel misses...

as for al Saadawi (R.I.P.) I tried reading her Woman at Point Zero and couldn't proceed with it. I just didn't see good writing there... I would have read it to the end only for a book club, for instance... perhaps it was the translation?

Yep to all of this.

The same sort of bizarre narratives about Ngugi sprung up in 2016 when Dylan won. Sort of mindless discussions ignoring any semblance of what the prize is actually awarded for or his writing were springing up on Reddit and pseudo-literary sites like Lithub (who occasionally publish great stuff but typically just lots of nonsense). There were all these articles, even from academics, insisting that somehow Ngugi should have won as some sort of counter to authoritarian regimes and racism in the western world (Trump essentially). Which even if you wanted to argue, Dylan, the heir-apparent to Woody Guthrie who literally opened for Martin Luther King Jr at the March on Washington much more readily fits that theme. It was clear in many of these cases that the authors of the articles had likely never actually read Ngugi and had just glossed over his Wikipedia page before penning their rage in op-eds.

Most articles in this vein typically ignore most of the authors' actual writing, history, and influence in the literary world and instead try to paint them as martyrs who due to their personal lives who somehow "must" win the prize because they've written about some sort of socio-political issue or because they aren't white men.

There is a clear cut case to be made for Ngugi being deserving of the prize. His novel A Grain of Wheat is a masterpiece for me. I find as a whole that his novels are far more satisfying and complex than Achebe's. His academic works focusing on the marginalization of native African languages are important and make a decent claim for reclaiming certain literary heritages before they're lost after years of colonization.

All of that being said, his body of work is uneven and has several large gaps. After his initial burst of output he went about 25 years before publishing another novel and then about another 15 before his next novel. His plays and essays have occasionally been out of print and it wasn't until fairly recently that Penguin republished his novels and made them available in the US and UK. I think the case for him would be easier were he a bit more prolific with his novels and were his works more widely available.

al Saadawi always struck me as more of a social figure than a literary one. A lot of her shorter works are included in basic World Literature courses and syllabi but outside of those I never really encounter discussions of her longer works or see them mentioned. She seems far more known for her stances against religion and genital mutilation than her literary works - at a U2 concert in a football stadium I was at they had her photo up at one point when honoring female activists (as well as, bizarrely, Simone de Beauvoir, who advocated for pedophilia and was a pedophile herself who groomed children at the school she taught at for sexual use by her and Sartre).

 

[Salixacaena]

With an imposing pool of writers, India (like Africa) is an other area that remains under represented among the Nobel laureates. I am aware that translation and availability could be an issue, but I was wondering if, excepting Rushdie, there was anyone from there that has been or could be considered.

Is Rushdie really an Indian writer? I certainly wouldn't say so and I doubt at this point Rushdie himself would say so. He's lived in the United States for over 20 years and is now a US citizen. His last two novels were almost entirely about the US, American politics, and the landscapes of the US. Prior to this he was a British citizen (I believe he has dual citizenship between the two now).

I'd expect that Ishiguro's win makes Rushdie's pretty unlikely. If it were to happen I'd expect it would need to be after more of the old guard of Swedish Academy members die off and are replaced - as I assume they aren't going to be making the case for him at this point if they haven't for the preceding two decades.

For me, his last two works deviated from what he's known for into a territory I really don't appreciate, those sort of knowingly-cheesy 'American" novels full of pop culture references and self-deprecating humor meant to appeal to the types who think of themselves as "literary" or "readers" because they'll read the latest Zadie Smith novel and whatever wins the latest Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award. They weren't bad per se but just seemed sort of knowingly dumbed down as if he was trying to appeal to the whole Trump-era zeitgeist and make headlines (which if you read any of his interviews from the last 5 years is essentially all he can talk about, Trump and bizarre Trump pun jokes he can't stop making). They're also the sort of works where unlike something like Midnight's Children I wonder if in as short as ten years they'll seem incredibly dated and out of touch.

 

[Salixacaena]

Meh, I'd personally call both Ngugi and Le Clezio much better writers than Achebe.

Ignoring that, the man essentially gave up on writing full, meaningful works by the end of the 1980s and just spent the rest of his life dabbling in poetry and shorter essays. Had he kept up at it and continued producing lengthier works he likely could have won. It seems hard to make a case for Achebe winning in 2008 when he basically hadn't produced anything of note in 20 years. His nonfiction book from 2012 was great but he died right after that so it's hard to know if he was being considered before he died.

 

[Lupo Avorio]

Giordano, really? I read La solitudine dei numeri primi and found it awful. I understand this was his first novel and it became a kind of bestseller. Probably he has evolved as a writer, you let me know.

Yes, that book is awful and Giordano has not evolved, I think. Anyway, that is one of his worst novels.

I would not put anyone of these name in that list neither. Especially Saviano! I suggest you to give a look at thissharp critical essay on him written by Walter Siti.

My bad, I was trying to say that Saviano is not on that list. And the others on the list are good young Italian writers, but not enough to have a chance in the future, if they don’t seriously evolve in the next decades. Thank you for the essay, very interesting.

Good question ! Unfortunately I’m not in the head of the members of the SA.
Maybe Carlos LISCANO ? Horacio CASTELLANOS-MOYA ? Pedro Juan GUTIERREZ ? Leonardo PADURA ?

Two authors from Cuba! I name another two. Too bad Fina García Marruz is 98, ‘cause she is a very good poetess, actually. Nancy Morejón maybe doesn’t have that international status, despite the Struga Poetry Evenings in 2006.

And one author from El Salvador! What do you guys think about Manlio Argueta?

Reality is that the SA doesn't look to Latinoamérica. There was a period of time when we had a plethora of amazing writers (Borges, Cortázar, Sábato, Fuentes, Pacheco, Gelman, Donoso, Onetti, Ribeyro etc) and the only chose GGM and about thirty years later, Vargas Llosa.

If it was really hard to happen with those terrific writers, what makes you think they will with a bunch of mediocre writers?

Only “hope” (?) is that they realize that Center and South America has been under-represented. They don’t have to balance it at all costs, but they could at least rediscover the peculiarities of that literature and consider it an added value.

I'd like to highlight a name from that list and that is the one from Selva Almada. I've read a couple of her books (Ladrilleros & El viento que arrasa) and I think she's a reality. Of course she's still young and needs to deliver some more powerful books to be considered a Nobel contender, but aside Mariana Enríquez and Samantha Schweblin, Argentina has a promisory triad of female writers te be looked in the future.

Also Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, if you consider her young (1968; Enríquez and Almada are born in 1973). Félix Bruzzone is another young (but male) promising author from Argentina and there is also Andrés Neuman, but he is Spanish-Argentine. Other names that I can think of are Ana María Shua, Alberto Manguel (Argentine-Canadian), Ariel Dorfman (Argentine-Chilean-American) and Silvia Baron Supervielle (French-Argentine). Sure, they’re not at the level of the “sacred monsters” of the past and I agree with Daniel del Real about that. But they’re what Argentina got right now.

 

[Salixacaena]

The media keep talking about the so-called "perennial candidates" such as Thiong'o or Murakami or Kundera or Roth (before he died), but we don't know if they ever really were any sort of candidates at all! - it is equally possible that the Academy considered their work and decided they were not worthy - many people would disagree, but it is Academy's decision to make and I trust them to make a good call - on most occasions.

Eh, I wouldn't say this. For any author they've acquired tons of works for I don't think you can say they were never a candidate or at the very least on some sort of longlist before quickly being discarded. Because even if you just want to point out that these specific authors are popular there are plenty of popular authors they aren't acquiring large sums of works from.

I see so many authors listed and mentioned in these speculation threads where the library has few if any works by them or if they do have larger numbers of works often times they haven't kept up or acquired anything new by the authors in 10+ years. These, I think it's safe to say, are not authors who have been considered or at the very least are no longer being considered or even thought of as potential winners.

In the other cases: Murakami, Roth, Kundera, who all have around 50 works total in the library, this seems like a far clearer indication to me that at some point they were looked into. I'd speculate that even if they were discarded as candidates the library then kept on purchasing their works just in case they wanted to come back to them. Sure Murakami is popular but if he was never considered why would they go to the effort of acquiring 45 of his works in a variety of languages? Stephen King is vastly more popular and they only have 3 books by him.

It also seems like this thread is quickly just becoming a list of every Latin American author alive... (some of whom have only been writing for a few years). Seems like material better suited for that Future Nobels thread.

 

[SpaceCadet]

Is Rushdie really an Indian writer? I certainly wouldn't say so and I doubt at this point Rushdie himself would say so. He's lived in the United States for over 20 years and is now a US citizen. His last two novels were almost entirely about the US, American politics, and the landscapes of the US. Prior to this he was a British citizen (I believe he has dual citizenship between the two now).

I'd expect that Ishiguro's win makes Rushdie's pretty unlikely. If it were to happen I'd expect it would need to be after more of the old guard of Swedish Academy members die off and are replaced - as I assume they aren't going to be making the case for him at this point if they haven't for the preceding two decades.

For me, his last two works deviated from what he's known for into a territory I really don't appreciate, those sort of knowingly-cheesy 'American" novels full of pop culture references and self-deprecating humor meant to appeal to the types who think of themselves as "literary" or "readers" because they'll read the latest Zadie Smith novel and whatever wins the latest Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award. They weren't bad per se but just seemed sort of knowingly dumbed down as if he was trying to appeal to the whole Trump-era zeitgeist and make headlines (which if you read any of his interviews from the last 5 years is essentially all he can talk about, Trump and bizarre Trump pun jokes he can't stop making). They're also the sort of works where unlike something like Midnight's Children I wonder if in as short as ten years they'll seem incredibly dated and out of touch.

Euh.... My question was not about Rushdie; I wanted to know if there was any Indian writer to be considered for the Nobel. (I wrote 'excepting Rushdie' just in case his name would come up, meaning 'excluding Rushdie' (my English is to be blamed here, sorry)). Anyway, I know virtually nothing about his writing (thank you for your detailed comment) but I do agree with you, at this point he cannot really be considered as an 'Indian writer'.

 

[kpjayan]

With an imposing pool of writers, India (like Africa) is an other area that remains under represented among the Nobel laureates. I am aware that translation and availability could be an issue, but I was wondering if, excepting Rushdie, there was anyone from there that has been or could be considered?

Is Rushdie Indian ? At least in here, he is still an expat. However, of He or Jhumpa Lahiri happens to win, there might be a few claims of them being Indians

On a larger question of the potential names for nominations, I could think lesser and lesser names to put forward to. Apart from Amitav Ghosh, there aren't any serious contenders who writes in English ( Keki Daruwalla,& Vikram Seth probably).

On the regional language writers, the availability of credible translation is an issue. Also, some of the better known names have recently passed away.

Throwing in some names :

Kannada : U R Ananthamurthy & Girish Karnad are no more. Chandrashekhara Kambar( 84) iand S L Bhyrappa( ) are two prominent ones.
Tamil : Jeyakanthan , Ki.Rajnarayanan, Ashokamitran are all recently passed away. Indiara Parthasarathy ( 91), C S Lakshmi aka Ambai ( 77) and Perumal Murugan ( 55 ) are few active names.
Malayalam : M T Vasudevan Nair ( 87) is probably most known names. T Padmanabhan (90) , Sarah Joseph ( 75) , M Mukundan ( 78 ) are still active.
Telugu : Not very familiar with the new writers apart from Lalitakumari aka Volga.
Marathi : Bhalchandra Nemede (87) , Shyam Manohar
Gujarathi : Raghuveer Chaudhury(82), Suman Shah & Sitanshu Yashaschandra ( 79)
Hindi : Kashinath Singh ( 84), Mridula Garg ( 82) .. Krishna Sobti & Kedarnath Singh , passed away recently.
Bengali : Shankar (87), Budhadeb Guha ( 85) or Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay ?? - Sunil Gangopadhyay, arguably best known in the contemporary bengali Literature , passed away few year ago.
Assamese : Indira Goswamy died in 2011. No other prominent names I recollect.
Punjabi : Gurdial Singh was the most known names, but he died in 2016.

 

[Papageno]

Eh, I wouldn't say this. For any author they've acquired tons of works for I don't think you can say they were never a candidate or at the very least on some sort of longlist before quickly being discarded. Because even if you just want to point out that these specific authors are popular there are plenty of popular authors they aren't acquiring large sums of works from.

I agree essentially - I didn't think that Thiong'o, Murakami etc. were never even considered, rather that maybe (at least in some of those "perennial" cases) they purchased their work at some point, read it, said "nope" and moved on without looking back.
I am not sure if the mere continued presence of someone's books in the Library is enough to prove they were continually seriously considered, maybe just nominated by someone - after all, the description of the Library on their website explicitly states they seek to collect as much of serious contemporary literature and literary criticism as possible, and facilitate research in those areas for scholars interested. If they have a lot of works by someone, it could be for those purposes rather than the Prize. It is a pretty big library...
And I find it shocking that they have 3 books of Stephen King!!! Whoever decided to purchase those and why?

 

[nagisa]

(as well as, bizarrely, Simone de Beauvoir, who advocated for pedophilia and was a pedophile herself who groomed children at the school she taught at for sexual use by her and Sartre).

If this is the case I'm thinking of, the girl was 17. Skeevy, yes, but calling Beauvoir a pedo is going a bit far I think (especially when there are many others on the French literary scene to throw that stone at with accuracy. There is certainly a big debate to have over the promotion of pedophilia in French literature after the Springora-Matzneff affair, overdue since Tony Duvert, but comments like this bring more heat than light).

 

[Leseratte]

I'd say that's a harsh reading of what I wrote, by no means did I mean to imply anything of that sort. I was simply trying to say that I think what you wrote was hyperbolic and unlikely to be true.

I find it to be a theme that people assume the worst from the Swedish Academy, and I won't doubt that there has traditionally been reason to do so, but there has been a wide array of changes with the Academy in the last few years alone, and personally I think it's more fair to give them time to create new trends as opposed to blaming them for things done decades ago.

It may be a harsh guess, but maybe in the year they chose Bob Dylan the SA didn´t have the time to read lots and lots of new books and so they chose a name, they knew it was a unanimity but in another sort of art. Dylan´s puzzled behavior when learning he had won the Nobel seems to confirm this hypothesis.

 

[Leseratte]

I agree essentially - I didn't think that Thiong'o, Murakami etc. were never even considered, rather that maybe (at least in some of those "perennial" cases) they purchased their work at some point, read it, said "nope" and moved on without looking back.
I am not sure if the mere continued presence of someone's books in the Library is enough to prove they were continually seriously considered, maybe just nominated by someone - after all, the description of the Library on their website explicitly states they seek to collect as much of serious contemporary literature and literary criticism as possible, and facilitate research in those areas for scholars interested. If they have a lot of works by someone, it could be for those purposes rather than the Prize. It is a pretty big library...
And I find it shocking that they have 3 books of Stephen King!!! Whoever decided to purchase those and why?

They must have some criteria for choosing the books they have to read for the contest. One can´t read all the recommended books all the time. They are too many.

 

[Johnny]

It may be a harsh guess, but maybe in the year they chose Bob Dylan the SA didn´t have the time to read lots and lots of new books and so they chose a name, they knew it was a unanimity but in another sort of art. Dylan´s puzzled behavior when learning he had won the Nobel seems to confirm this hypothesis.

What makes you think they did not have time to read lots of books?? Whether you like him or not Dylan had long been rumoured as a candidate, and in my mind a very worthy one. He has been a compelling artist for 60 years now and his artistic output has been of the highest order, both literally and musically.

 

[Leseratte]

Books take their time to get read, specially dense books, be they prose or poetry. And his best songs are universally known. That said, I like him them and I like him, as a musician, Johnny. It seemed that he was awarded the Nobel for his songs. There certainly were lots of other candidates with a more Literature oriented production:
" The Nobel Prize committee announced on October 13, 2016, that it would be awarding Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".[9][470] The New York Times reported: "Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901."[471] Dylan remained silent for two weeks after receiving the award,[472][473] and then told journalist Edna Gundersen that getting the award was "amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?"[474] "

Bob Dylan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Another untypical winner was Sir Winston Churchill:
"The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953 was awarded to Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 'for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.'

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953 was awarded to Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"

www.nobelprize.org

 

[nagisa]

Let's not rehash the Dylan debate please... No one has to be happy about it, no one has to hope something of the same order happens again.

I agree essentially - I didn't think that Thiong'o, Murakami etc. were never even considered, rather that maybe (at least in some of those "perennial" cases) they purchased their work at some point, read it, said "nope" and moved on without looking back.
I am not sure if the mere continued presence of someone's books in the Library is enough to prove they were continually seriously considered, maybe just nominated by someone - after all, the description of the Library on their website explicitly states they seek to collect as much of serious contemporary literature and literary criticism as possible, and facilitate research in those areas for scholars interested. If they have a lot of works by someone, it could be for those purposes rather than the Prize. It is a pretty big library...
And I find it shocking that they have 3 books of Stephen King!!! Whoever decided to purchase those and why?

I agree, like you say the library is also a repository. What I meant earlier by the library ≠ the SA deliberations is that while it's certainly an indication, it tells us nothing about split votes and "dark horse" compromise candidates that can emerge, for better or for worse... Wasn't Dario Fo such a compromise for example?

(Re: King: As a child for whom King was one of the gateway drugs to serious reading — I blazed through IT in a couple of afternoons at waaaay too young an age —, don't knock him not Nobel-worthy, maybe, but not all literature has to be. Home cooking vs gastronomy, etc)

I would love it if Habermas got it for his philosophy, though the SA may feel they've ventured (too) far from capital-L-Literature already with Dylan and Alexievitch. (Last philosopher was Sartre '64, after an impressive run of Bergson, Russell and Camus, and he refused it)

 

[Ludus]

Also Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, if you consider her young (1968; Enríquez and Almada are born in 1973). Félix Bruzzone is another young (but male) promising author from Argentina and there is also Andrés Neuman, but he is Spanish-Argentine. Other names that I can think of are Ana María Shua, Alberto Manguel (Argentine-Canadian), Ariel Dorfman (Argentine-Chilean-American) and Silvia Baron Supervielle (French-Argentine). Sure, they’re not at the level of the “sacred monsters” of the past and I agree with Daniel del Real about that. But they’re what Argentina got right now.

I think Alberto Manguel would be a great winner.

 

[Johnny]

I like him, as a musician, Johnny. It seemed that he was awarded the Nobel for his songs. There certainly were lots of other candidates with a more Literature oriented production:
" The Nobel Prize committee announced on October 13, 2016, that it would be awarding Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".[9][470] The New York Times reported: "Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901."[471] Dylan remained silent for two weeks after receiving the award,[472][473] and then told journalist Edna Gundersen that getting the award was "amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?"[474] "

Bob Dylan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Another untypical winner was Sir Winston Churchill:
"The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953 was awarded to Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 'for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.'

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1953 was awarded to Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"

www.nobelprize.org

It was definitely his songs, but it was the “poetic expression” of his songs that was the important bit. There is no doubt there are better musicians but Dylan’s strength has been his ability as a lyricist and storyteller. We’re also back there of course to discussions about whether literature has to be written down, oral traditions of classic Greek literature etc. He’s clearly a divisive winner which I understand but it was certainly a courageous decision. My fear for this (and other literary prizes) is that they will become watered down where political correctness will become more important than literary merit. We’ll see.

 

[Morbid Swither]

I think Alberto Manguel would be a great winner.

I’m so excited to see someone who is a fan of Alberto Manguel. Despite the fact that he is one of my favorite human beings ever, like a hero and inspiration to me, I don’t think I would nominate him for the award. If I could be anywhere in the world, I’d chose to be in his company, among his books.

 

[Morbid Swither]

I hope that brining this topic up again isn’t too tedious, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on awarding joint prizes in Literature. When contrasted with the Nobel prize’s in other categories, which seem more often than not, shared prizes or, less so, but even in Peace, there are organizations/collectives.
This makes sense, since the specific efforts of these individuals normally supports collaboration, which ultimately yields breakthrough discoveries and applications thereof. In times past, on such rare occasions, and never in my lifetime, there have been a handful of these instances.
I hope that someone in the forum with a better knowledge of the award’s history could share some insight about the joint prizes in Literature.
Are there any duos or trios, that you would find appropriate to honor with a Nobel?
Is a literary achievement, or, let’s just say: a distinctive and profound body of literary art, much too singular to be shared?
As I have previously stated, I would never want to see frequent or back-to-back shared prizes in Literature. But from time to time, definitely wouldn’t mind it.
I wonder if laureates in one of the sciences ever feel snubbed if they are awarded a shared prize, or if the nations they represent get offended, or if the world at large even really bats an eye? Why do I get the feeling this wouldn’t at all be the case if we’re talking the Literature prize?

 

[Morbid Swither]

Unless I am mistaken, Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz is the only Arabic laureate. I would really for the Nobel to award a writer from the Middle/Near East. Not necessarily Arabic—Persian, would also be interesting. I seem to recall that one of the newer members of the SA is a Persian scholar….
One of the world authors I wish had been awarded is Mahmoud Darwish, now deceased.
However, if Adünis still isn’t deemed worthy, then I confidently speculate that Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (born 1940) or Sinaan Anton (born 1967) would be great choices.

 

[Leseratte]

Let's not rehash the Dylan debate please... No one has to be happy about it, no one has to hope something of the same order happens again.

No, nagisa, I agree with you. This was merely an example how much SA can surprise and stray from what is commonly called Literature.