WLF Prize in Literature 2024

[SpaceCadet]

Should add that I'd also be really interested in reading international reactions to her work. She writes about Australia in quite specifically Australian language. I don't think it will be impenetrable or incomprehensible to everyone else; I'm just curious to hear what resonates (or doesn't) from other perspectives.

Provided that the book (Carpentaria) I've ordered last week reaches me, I will be reading it before the end of this year and should post some comment on it ater on.

 

[SpaceCadet]

Thanks to @Bartleby for this!

But not thanks to our collective wisdom for the hard choice. I'll go with Dương Thu Hương — but like last year with Carson, will reserve a spot for close fourth on the reading list for Alexis Wright. She intrigues me very much, but I've read quite a bit of Dương and want to champion her.

Fully agree with this. Even though I am yet to read some of A. Wright's work, it seems to me that Mrs. Duong's writing would be on a more 'even footing' than Mrs. Wright's or Mr. Kadare's, for 'competing' with the two first candidates.

 

[Americanreader]

Does Duong Thu Huong have a work in English that could be considered representative?

 

[nagisa]

Does Duong Thu Huong have a work in English that could be considered representative?

I would go for Paradise of the Blind, or if you're up to the doorstopper challenge, The Zenith. (Novel Without a Name is also highly regarded)

From the blurbs: Paradise of the Blind is 'a devastating portrait of three women fighting to maintain their dignity in a society that expects ever greater sacrifices from them. [...] a rich, sensuous journey through a Vietnam never seen before. In images of astonishing grace and power, and through her unforgettable gallery of women, Duong Thu Huong dazzles the reader with her ability to evoke the colors, the foods, the smells, and the age-old rituals of her country.
At the center of the novel is Hang, a young woman forced to grow up too fast in the slums of Hanoi and the turbulence of modern Vietnam. Duong Thu Huong brilliantly captures Hang's rebellion against her mother and the loneliness of her search for self. There is Hang's mother, who watches, powerless, as her life is shattered by a fanatical political campaign led by her own brother. And there is the mysterious Aunt Tam, who has accumulated wealth and bitterness in equal parts and seeks to pass on both to her niece, Hang.
The intoxicating beauty of the Vietnamese countryside, the hunger, the pride, the endurance of ordinary Vietnamese people confronted with the hypocrisy and corruption that surround them - all are here in this moving and lyrical novel."

And "The Zenith imagines the final months in the life of Ho Chi Minh—president of North Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969—at an isolated mountain compound where he is imprisoned both physically and emotionally.
Complex, daring, and elegiac, Duong Thu Huong's novel weaves Ho Chi Minh's story together with narratives of members of his inner circle and a village elder, illuminating the personal costs of political struggle, the addictive quality of power and influence, and how a tragedy can threaten to engulf not just one individual but an entire nation. Most radically, it is a multidimensional portrait of Ho Chi Minh himself; a man who is often painted as a saint, martyr, or puppet, but whom Huong portrays as a real person whose life encapsulated humanity's capacity for vision, greed, pain, love, and fallibility.
An epic masterpiece that is both a gripping political thriller and a haunting excavation of the human heart, The Zenith is an unforgettable novel that leaves readers unsettled, transformed, and closer to life's fundamental mysteries."

I also know that Beyond Illusions, her second book, really launched her career and was very widely popular and sold, but I've not read it yet.

Anyone reading French (where she is more translated than in English) can also check out her recent doorstopper diptych Sanctuaire du cœur and Les collines d'eucalyptus. Stemming from her real life experience of having a 16 year-old nephew of her cousin run away, she imagines two versions of the story of what could have pushed an adolescent to do so and what becomes of him, with as backdrops a rapidly changing Vietnam.

 

[Leseratte]

Pool:
Alexis Wright ???

 

[namelesshere]

Pool:
Alexis Wright ???

Next year maybe! If others are anything like me, I have her to read over the course of the next year anyway (along with lots of other names who crop up on the speculation thread) and maybe if others do the same she'll do even better in the nom process for 2025...

 

[Liam]

Taylor Swift 2

I am guessing that the two points Taylor Swift had received came from Daniel,

 

[Americanreader]

I am guessing that the two points Taylor Swift had received came from Daniel,

That was me. I unfortunately didn't sway anyone.

 

[Morbid Swither]

I’m so agonized here! These three writes compromise my ultimate choices (solid top 3) for the Nobel 2024! Kadare actually makes so much sense right now, finally, just reread The General of the Dead Army, and it just decimates my emotions and knowledge, as I see Gaza and Ukraine, our very stratosphere, it’s just astonishing. Kadare please.

 

[Daniel del Real]

I am guessing that the two points Taylor Swift had received came from Daniel,

Not really, but since they didn't count my vote I could have added more votes to her.

 

[hayden]

And then there were three.

 

[Ben Jackson]

With the voting poll closed, we have an official shortlist: Anne Carson, Ulitskaya and Duong Thu Huong. I . thee shortlist is great and beautifully and quite universally representative: Asian, North American and European.

 

[Bartleby]

Dương Thu Hương is now officially part of our shortlist for the 2024 prize! Congratulations to her!

We can discuss her work here.

Happy readings!

 

[CapreseBoi]

Ive read some (or one?) Ulitskaya and almost all of my queen Anne, and although it's going to be obvious who I'm voting for, I have to read Duong Thu Hong too i guess should be fun