My husband asked me yesterday morning whether I had heard anything about
nominations for the Nobel Prize for Literature since he knew I was
waiting for the announcement of this year's winner. I hadn't (and I know the official ones will not be published for another 50 years but there are always speculations) so I
googled and found lots of names, mostly unknown to me. I had read Ismail
Kadaré (The Fall of the Stone City, The Pyramid), Lyudmila Ulitskaya,
(Imago or The Big Green Tent), Yu Hua (China in Ten Words) and heard of
Milan Kundera, Edna O'Brian but had never heard of Can Xue, Annie Ernaux, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Maryse Condé, Nuruddin Farah, Yan Lianke,
Scholastique Mukasonga, Xi Xi, Jon Fosse, Javier Marias, Hélène Cixous,
Dubravka Ugrešić, Botho Strauss, Ivan Klíma, Mircea Cărtărescu, László
Krasznahorkai, Péter Nádas.
So, I was quite surprised to find the name of the new Laureate (who hadn't been on any of the lists).
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and after winning the Booker and the Whitbread Prize and being shortlisted for the the Los Angeles Ties Book Award, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday.
Officially, he is only the sixth African winner after Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) in 1984, Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) in 1988, Nadine Gordimer (South Africa) in 1991, J.M. Coetzee (South Africa) in 2003, Doris Lessing (UK and Zimbabwe) in 2007. Having said that, if you include Doris Lessing who was born in Iran and then spent 24 years in Zimbabwe, you should technically also include Albert Camus (1957) who was not just born in Algeria but lived there for 27 years and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008) who lived in Nigeria and Mauritius and also has the Mauritian nationality. But who am I to decide this? And it won't make a huge difference if you consider that the Prize has been awarded 118 times until now.
Needless to say, since I never heard of this author, I haven't read any of his books - yet.
In the meantime, I have read "Pilgrim's Way".
Abdulrazak Gurnah received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".
Hilarious indeed that all the major betting sites didn't even mention his name in their list on 30 or so authors!
ReplyDeleteInteresting that we recently shared comments, I think that's you, with Africans (in its loose definition, I agree) who had received the Nobel Prize in literature.
I am always in shock when I not only have never read a book by a Nobel Prize winner, but have not even heard their name!! Even though i rea a few books every year, lol, and also visit tons of other book bloggers (and some provide a vast view of literature, like yours for instance).
So I rushed to my library website. It was early, but apparently someone beat me to it and put a hold on the only copy of the only book they have - Gravel Heart. Still, I'm actually impressed they do have one book by him. And actually, I feel more like reading this one than his most famous (Paradise).
BUT, I have some good news for our readalong. As I was looking at his titles, I discovered he is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie!! So I did request this one. Could be helpful for our discussion.
Neat to see he must be a good friend of Rushdie's. So another great mind of our time I'm sure
I like that, Emma. It shows that there are so many authors out there that are really worth reading and we can*t possibly know them all.
DeleteLike you, I sometimes keep forgetting who I shared comments with. It might well have been me discussing African Nobel Prize winners.
I saw some comments where people mentioned "why not a woman"? Well, we had four women among the last ten laureates but only six (or eight) Africans among a hundred, so I think it is a good idea.
I want to go to a bookshop now where I can have a look at some of his books in order to choose the one I like most. And it's no rush since I still have a few books to read from other challenges, including "The Satanic Verses". I'm looking forward to your report about the Cambridge Companion, it should be a great help for our discussion.
I've never even heard of Abdulrazak Gurnah from Tanzania!!
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen anyone who heard about him, Lisa. And so we can look forward to another great author. That's what I love about the Nobel Prize. Even though I have a few authors on my mind who would deserve it, this is jsut as interesting.
DeleteI've heard of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and heard him speak 2 years ago at the Bay Area Book Festival. I was hoping he'd win the Nobel Prize for Literature as he has been long listed as a contender for awhile now.
DeleteOh, nice. I will have to see what he writes. I mean, I am happy it's an African author who won the award but I know there are many others out there who would deserve it, as well. It's just a shame that it takes them fifty years to publish who really was nominated. I'm sure we'd find lot of great authors on those lists, as well.
DeleteI have never heard of this author either. But now that he's won the Nobel, maybe my library will get some of his books.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope so, Lark. I know mine won't since they only carry German books and I refuse to read translations from English. ;)
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