Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 Speculation

[Liam]

What I said above was totally a joke, btw. I've only read ONE book by Can Xue (and a minor one at that) so I am in no position to critique her work. Just having a bit of fun teasing my old friend Bartleby,

 

[Stevie B]

He'll be devastated then to learn that in the past few months I've come under the spell of his compatriot Dag Solstad and would prefer to see him win. (Fosse getting it would still be great, but Solstad's books like Novel 11, Book 17 really impressed me. Plus, a Nobel for Solstad would mean more English translations.)

It looks like New Directions has been doing a good job in recent years of publishing English editions of Solstad's books. Still, it looks like about 2/3 of his novels have yet to be translated into English, including his first book, which won the Norwegian Critics Prize in 1969. T Singer appears to have an interesting plotline (though I admit to having a soft spot in my heart for books about librarians). Have you read that one? By the way, Solstad has a novel with the intriguing title of Bread and Weapons, though I've never seen a copy for sale.

 

[Stevie B]

I'm curious how they chose Gurnah. I do wonder if he was a compromise pick.

For me, Gurnah's selection was a fun, out-of-nowhere selection (unlike Bob Dylan's).

 

[redhead]

It looks like New Directions has been doing a good job in recent years of publishing English editions of Solstad's books. Still, it looks like about 2/3 of his novels have yet to be translated into English, including his first book, which won the Norwegian Critics Prize in 1969. T Singer looks to have an interesting plotline (though I admit to having a soft spot in my heart for books about librarians). Have you read that one? By the way, Solstad has a novel with the intriguing title of Bread and Weapons, though I've never seen a copy for sale.

Hopefully New Directions keeps the momentum going with their publications and Novel 1987 and/or Gymnasium Teacher Pedersen get translated. The former won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the latter seems to be considered one of his best in Norway. Bread and Weapons is an early social realist book by him, and to my knowledge it hasn't been translated yet.

And yup, I've read T Singer and enjoyed it, though it was before Solstad "clicked" with me a few months ago and I didn't quite get what he was doing with some of his narrative quirks. At the time, I wrote:

"A character study following a shy, quiet, nervous, not-notable Norwegian man through his life. The narrative mostly consists of odd scenes and summaries about Singer at various points in his life, many of which go on for too long, and yet there’s something that keeps you reading. I really didn’t need that whole dream-like scene where Singer spends the night drinking with a wealthy businessman, but I was entranced during that whole section. It didn’t all land for me (ex. Solstad’s metafictional narration), but I’ll definitely be returning to Solstad at some point in the near future."

I think if I reread it now with more knowledge of what I was getting into, I'd appreciate it a lot more.

 

[Stevie B]

Bread and Weapons is an early social realist book by him, and to my knowledge it hasn't been translated yet.

I was thinking that was a possibility, but I saw a number of his books with titles only listed in Norwegian. For some reason, this title was translated into English. Thanks, by the way, for reposting your reaction to T Singer. If Solstad doesn't win the Nobel this year, I might nominate him for consideration for the Wolfie Award as a way to push myself to explore this author's work.

 

[ministerpumpkin]

I'm curious how they chose Gurnah. I do wonder if he was a compromise pick.

I sort of got the impression that he was someone they had their eye on for a while and were just waiting to hand him the prize. Whatever the case, he sure was a wonderful surprise. It almost makes me not want to follow this year's speculation, but the side discussions of books and writers I've never heard of are too fascinating to pass up!

 

[Bartleby]

Have you guys read Kjell Espmark's Nobel Literature Prize--- A New Century? It's a companion piece to his earlier volume on the Nobel Prizes that focused, this time, on this century's choices. The pdf file is on the Swedish Academy website.

Oh, thanks for pointing that out! I'm eager to reading it! It's here, btw. (edit: nice to see that he updated the "Political Integrity" part to include more recent candidates, namely Mo Yan, Müller, Handke etc...

What I said above was totally a joke, btw. I've only read ONE book by Can Xue (and a minor one at that) so I am in no position to critique her work. Just having a bit of fun teasing my old friend Bartleby,

I know, darling ?

Re: Gurnah. Still haven't managed to read him, but seeing other people's impressions, especially those who've recently read his entire body of work, he seems like some sort of a safe choice, one people can't quite fault the Academy for making, since he seems to possess that kind of internal integrity in his works, with themes recurring, that the SA likes to award. As I've read in a goodreads review, the entirety of his oeuvre apparently is heftier than any individual novel... I think of Ishiguro (another writer people still think was a compromise choice), who writes basically the same book again and again, only changing settings and plot; or Modiano, one that admits to writing one long book; or Aleksievitch, her books being so potent and similar in approach; the list goes on. Even those more sprawling writers, like Handke, or varied in approaches to form like Tokarczuk (and perhaps not all even in their works), still are justified for their constant thematic pursuits.

Bottom line is, I think we should expect again and be looking at such a writer, whose contributions to Literature comprise a cohesive whole.

 

[Ben Jackson]

For me, Gurnah's selection was a fun, out-of-nowhere selection (unlike Bob Dylan's).

Agree with you, Dylan's selection was a knockout, sometimes the Academy make choices that confuses us. Dario Fo's selection another shocker. As for Gurnah, it was another thing entirely, when Africa's attention was on Ngugi or Al-Koni or Couto, it went another direction. I think Gurnah is a safe choice, but Dylan's win will still be memorable, in a polemical sense, until the Nobel reports are unveiled.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Hopefully New Directions keeps the momentum going with their publications and Novel 1987 and/or Gymnasium Teacher Pedersen get translated. The former won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the latter seems to be considered one of his best in Norway. Bread and Weapons is an early social realist book by him, and to my knowledge it hasn't been translated yet.

And yup, I've read T Singer and enjoyed it, though it was before Solstad "clicked" with me a few months ago and I didn't quite get what he was doing with some of his narrative quirks. At the time, I wrote:

"A character study following a shy, quiet, nervous, not-notable Norwegian man through his life. The narrative mostly consists of odd scenes and summaries about Singer at various points in his life, many of which go on for too long, and yet there’s something that keeps you reading. I really didn’t need that whole dream-like scene where Singer spends the night drinking with a wealthy businessman, but I was entranced during that whole section. It didn’t all land for me (ex. Solstad’s metafictional narration), but I’ll definitely be returning to Solstad at some point in the near future."

I think if I reread it now with more knowledge of what I was getting into, I'd appreciate it a lot more.

The only book I've read from Solstad is Shyness and Dignity, a book I reviewed few weeks before. The rest I haven't seen as I've understood just now that his other key works haven't been translated to English.

Thanks for stating other books of his though.

 

[Leseratte]

Hopefully New Directions keeps the momentum going with their publications and Novel 1987 and/or Gymnasium Teacher Pedersen get translated. The former won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the latter seems to be considered one of his best in Norway. Bread and Weapons is an early social realist book by him, and to my knowledge it hasn't been translated yet.

And yup, I've read T Singer and enjoyed it, though it was before Solstad "clicked" with me a few months ago and I didn't quite get what he was doing with some of his narrative quirks. At the time, I wrote:

"A character study following a shy, quiet, nervous, not-notable Norwegian man through his life. The narrative mostly consists of odd scenes and summaries about Singer at various points in his life, many of which go on for too long, and yet there’s something that keeps you reading. I really didn’t need that whole dream-like scene where Singer spends the night drinking with a wealthy businessman, but I was entranced during that whole section. It didn’t all land for me (ex. Solstad’s metafictional narration), but I’ll definitely be returning to Solstad at some point in the near future."

I think if I reread it now with more knowledge of what I was getting into, I'd appreciate it a lot more.

You got me curious about that author, Red.

 

[Leseratte]

Not having read the majority of authors listed here( last year I got dizzy at so many new names) my speculations are still very general and vague. At the moment, it seems easier to me to speculate at who won´t get it.
If one thinks on what might be SA´s guidelines this year:

1-The necessity to surprise (I think that is a general guideline of SA. If they become too predicable they will become boring and people, including a certain WLF won´t be spending months and months any more trying to guess the winner.

2-Europe is particularly affected by the Ukraine war and its implications in its boundaries, its economics and social capacities. "This war is not fought in some distant continent and the refugees are not coming to us over the sea in fragile ships. They are our next door neighbors, their fate may be our fate tomorrow. In this sense, we are all Ukraine".


3-Sweden is feeling particularly affected by this war. I hadn´t realized until the conflict began, that Sweden and Russia are close neighbors. Now, the usually neutral Sweden is battling for her own security.

So, up to now it seems that the chosen author will be nearly or distantly somehow related to this conflict. On a first glance there seems to me to be little chance for any authors outside Europe.

 

[redhead]

I have no idea if they’ll use the prize as a way to address the war or not. Somehow either option would be totally on brand for them.

 

[Bartleby]

Reading the Espmark text cited above, there's this passage:

But the choice of Louise Glück has also another significance, which appears in Thomas Steinfeld’s reaction. He found himself surprised at having missed an important author. “Respect for the Academy: it has emphasized its knowledge and its sovereignty.” The Prize in Literature has in other words fulfilled the function which the “pragmatic” policy promised: it has shone light on a significant author which the world would not otherwise have taken notice of in anything like the same degree.

The text does not mention Gurnah, but he was, as we know, definitely a new discovery to almost everyone. I wonder if they're now on this track of presenting important but neglected authors, instead of awarding already established great authors. Later Espmark will speak of the difficulties of awarding every worthy writer alive when they usually only give the prize to one each year, which could further make the point of shining light on obscure authors, as long, of course, as they are creating great Literature first and foremost.

Edit:

also, I'm both happy and sad that Karen Blixen really nearly got the prize (it's detailed in the section "tomas tranströmer – the nordic problem" - long story short, the Nobel Committee's majority was in her favour, but the academy at large thought another Nordic writer wouldn't be an advisable choice, so they pushed for Quasimodo to win).

 

[Liam]

so they pushed for Quasimodo to win

I totally wasn't aware that the Hunchback of Notre-Dame won the Nobel Prize in Literature! ?

 

[Leemo]

After last year's shocker I think this year's winner will be someone less out of left field.

Although I do fear some that the committee will choose someone not based on their writing alone but instead a Ukrainian or someone who's overtly anti-Putin in their writing. Hopefully they let their anti-Putin statement stand on its own.

 

[Abhi]

Gurnah was an interesting choice but he is one of those writers whose bibliography I don't feel like I need to read in full to understand him (don't kill me but I feel like Toni Morrison, in spite of her brilliance, is one such writer who doesn't need to be read in full). I would prefer a laureate who has both formally and thematically reinvented themself over their career so far (which reminds me of Doris Lessing).

 

[meepmurp]

Gurnah was an interesting choice but he is one of those writers whose bibliography I don't feel like I need to read in full to understand him (don't kill me but I feel like Toni Morrison, in spite of her brilliance, is one such writer who doesn't need to be read in full). I would prefer a laureate who has both formally and thematically reinvented themself over their career so far (which reminds me of Doris Lessing).

Uh, Toni Morrison is definitely a writer who deserves to be read in full. Her books are wildly different from each other in content and she was constantly experimenting with form (see: The Bluest Eye vs Beloved vs Jazz vs Love), granted most people seem to hear her name and think of her incredibly singular gifts for stylized language. But she was really, in my opinion, an American heiress to Faulkner or even someone like Virginia Woolf, who was really pushing at the boundaries of what a novel might do or tell or show.

In that way I would say she was a very different writer with a very different overall project from someone like Gurnah who I agree is sort of re-engaging and reworking the same thematic/ontological territory in book after book, albeit with cumulatively revelatory results, as some have pointed out. He's not really out here trying to remake the wheel.

 

[Liam]

He's not really out here trying to remake the wheel.

"I'm not going to stop the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel." Daenerys Targaryen,

 

[redhead]

From that link @Bartleby posted:

This marks a dramatic change from 2017. In the autumn of that year I was in China and was told that hackers had managed to break into the Academy’s data and had come across the most secret of all, that year’s short list! The government had decided that a Chinese candidate should be allowed to accept the prize in spite of his uncomfortable activity, and this was because of the risk of a Japanese author being awarded. (It was Kazuo Ishiguro who despite his British citizenship and a production in English was seen as Japanese.)

Sounds like Yan Lianke has been shortlisted before.

 

[hayden]

After last year's shocker I think this year's winner will be someone less out of left field.

Agreed. I think Gurnah may have pulled the biggest shock this century.

Wasn't expecting this thread to be up for another two or so months. I don't mind (I look forward to the thread, and it usually gives me plenty of recommendations), but I haven't quite starting thinking on this year's potential winner. My list probably looks somewhat bland/boring/usual-suspects...

I'm leaning towards a European or Asian writer (who strays from English), which led me to boil it down to these ten—
??László Krasznahorkai
??/?? Dubravka Ugrešić
?? Annie Ernaux
?? Yu Hua
?? Ana Blandiana
?? Haruki Murakami (and, yes, I'm being serious)
?? Jon Fosse
????Milan Kundera (and, yes, I'm being serious)
??/?? Hélène Cixous
(with a left-field who's that/what just happened??? twist of)—
?? Kim Hyesoon
(and, breaking form for one second)—
?? Frankétienne

I won't rule out a Caribbean winner, but I don't believe this will be the year for an English-language writer, or an African (which rules out two of my top picks, Carson and Thiong'o). For some reason (even though it has absolutely no justification) I'm not seeing a South American writer winning this year either. Apart from Aira, I'm honestly in the dark to who they would vouch for.

I know this is a boring/typical list of authors we have seen mentioned year-after-year, but I believe the SA will play it somewhat safe this year and award an author many people who watch the prize are familiar with. I am leaning strongly towards one of those first four, particularly Krasznahorkai (and not just because he won our inaugural WLF award). This year or the next, it's his time.

I'll also add, while I truly don't think it'll be an English writer for three years in a row, Michael Ondaatje has some excellent cards on the table.