With two getting the prize this year and in the backdrop of all that has happened with the Academy of late (Bob Dylan’s prize and the Academy scandal), speculation should reach unprecedented levels this year. My probables list this year is rather a long list, but let me warn you this is a merit list and not based on some strange logic the Academy applies year after year:
1, Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador) – limited oeuvre, but piercing in impact. His “Dance with the Snakes” and “Senselessness” have no parallels anywhere.
2. Zoran Zivkovic (Serbia) – The Papyrus trilogy made us sit up and take note. What he wrote later confirmed the impression that the underlying sardonic humour is truly 21[SUP]st[/SUP] centuriyish and he is in a space of his own.
3. Jaan Kaplinski (Estonia): If a poet gets the nod this year it could be this immensely talented and perceptive voice from a little known part of the world.
4. Mario Bellatin (Mexico): His “Jacob the Mutant” had a feel quite unlike the Latin American experience we anticipate from the South of America. The English translation of his latest, “Uruguayan Book of Dead” is yet to reach me. But, going by reports it is a major work of recent years and that yardstick of the Academy should suit his candidature very well.
5. Mircea Cartarescu (Romania): His “Nostalgia” and the more recent “Blinding” with its experimental mix of memoir and fiction and the consummate craft employed to achieve a seamless blend that leaves you gasping at times makes him an ideal candidate on sheer literary merit. He has all the major awards with him except the Booker and Nobel. Serious candidate, sure.
6. Mia Couto (Mozambique): If anyone with African nationality should win, it could be him. His “Sleepwalking” woke us up from slumber and made us rub our eyes. Whatever he wore subsequently until the recent “Pensativities” have been consistent with the first impression. The intellectual depth and the broad spectrum that we find in “Pensativities” is truly matchless.
7. Jon Fosse (Norway): If a major playwright is honoured this year, it should be Jon Fosse. His cryptic and atmospheric writing carries a unique stamp of authenticity and is truly international in its emotional appeal.
8. William T Vollman (USA): The eclectic spread of his writing and scholarship based on real life experience should make him a dear choice. Controversial, unconventional and often provocative he stands on a unique pedestal. His seven volume treatise on violence is one of its kind. I have only read the abridged one volume version, but that is truly revealing. His writings on environmental issues and a whole lot of stuff that we should be concerned about make him a deserved candidate more for his non-fiction writing than for his novels and short stories.
9. Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia): She could be the most likely female candidate this year. Playful, inventive, entertaining, perceptive, experimental – you can use an many adjectives to qualify her writing. Her publications in the last five years have all received critical acclaim. So that makes her hot property this year.
10. Gabriela Adamesteanu (Romania): Another female candidate whose immense talent hasn’t yet received the attention it deserves. “It is not the future that brings us the biggest surprises, but the past which all our lives we never stop rereading”: this incisive quote from her latest novel ‘A Love Story and a Book about Love’ can be a beginning for anyone unaccustomed to her. History and social drama find a dexterous mix in her writing and we get trained to read new meanings in old ideologies and give new interpretations to historical events. Her “Wasted Morning” is a truly representative work.
11. Antonio Munoz Molina (Spain): Deserves the prize for the sheer sweep of talent that marks out his works. His “Like a fading Shadow’ and “The Manuscript of Ashes” are vastly different in its theme, treatment of subject and the craft employed, but they are real monumental works of art in their own right. Who can deny the sparkle? Often cinematic in its visual images, his writing is a celebration of life much like we have seen in Marquez.
12. Hamid ismailov: (Kyrgyzstan) Versatile artist who has dabbled in experimental work, fusion arts involving music, poetry and other forms. None has succeeded as much as Ismailov is reconciling Central Asian literary traditions with contemporary international realities. His “A Poet and Bin Laden” expertly blends reality and fiction that leaves you with a feeling that today’s fiction can be tomorrow’s reality. His recent works “Dead Lake” and “Devil’s Dance” are substantial creative efforts going by reports (I am yet to read them). But the parameters of the Academy fits him well.
The common thread for all the candidates above is their age bracket: they all fall within the age group of 55 to 75. That remains an unannounced preferred age group for the Academy.
Many others get eliminated in the race for reasons which have nothing to do with merit.
Olga Tokarczuk and Laszlo Krasznahorkai have won too many prizes recently and have been too much in the news. So likely to be eliminated in the race.
Ngugi wa thiong'o and Murakami have been leading speculation in the past and have remained betting favourites. So no way for them. Besides, Murakami is too voluminous and has become predictive these days in his writings.
Adunis, very deserving but age might go against him
Javier Marias, Enrique Vila-Matas and Antonio Lobo Antunes too have been favourites for some time. If one goes by the predilections of the Academy of late, their overriding popularity might work against them although all of them deserve to be honoured.
There are three Africans who truly deserves to be in the favoured list: Abdellatif Laabi, the Moroccan poet, Nuruddin Farah, the Somalian novelist and Nawal El Saadawi, the Egyptian crusader. But Laabi hasn’t written anything major in the last few years and Nuruddin Farah has been much discussed earlier too. Nawal El Saadawi is too old to be considered
Can Xue could be an Asian prospect, but with Ishiguro of Asian stock winning the last prize, it is unlikely that she will be looked at.
