Hello Gentle Reader.
Back in May, the Swedish Academy, released a tweet, announcing that the five candidates had been chosen. This set off a small firestorm of speculation. English publications released their usual suspects: Haruki Murkami of Japan; Don DeLillo and Philip Roth of America; and many were calling for the prize to be awarded posthumously to Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Yet still let’s walk away from the usual suspects, and think about other authors eligible and named in speculation for the prize.
It cannot be denied though that with the death of Chinua Achebe that Africa as a continent, and its literature is at the forefront of the prize. The last Africa writer – in the sense from the continent of Africa (sorry Toni Morrison), and actual 'native,' or African by tribal origin; was playwright and poet Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, in nineteen-eighty six.
Here is the list, and the names that have been passed around. These are the ones that I have chosen to focus on. Yet will only see who wins until October.
Africa –
Ayes Kwei Armah – Ghana – Armah deals with postcolonial Africa, traditional African beliefs, and an invading western culture. Ayes Kwei Armah characters usually deal with, a sense of homeland and loss, and a new western world and existence – usually in the form of education. Armah has been cited as belonging to a new generation of Africa writers after Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. He has written about an increasing age of despair. A time of cross roads. With the exception “Two Thousand Seasons,” which goes back thousands of years, and discusses the transatlantic slave trade. It was written in allegorical format, and philosophised discussion; a departure from the autobiographical and the realistic of his other novels.
Nuruddin Farah – Somalia – The self-imposed exiled Somali writer, who writes in English, has been an international writer from, the continent. He has won numerous international awards, which includes the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His most famous work is perhaps the “Blood in the Sun,” Trilogy; a coming of age story, in a post-independent world. It is in fact the first part of this trilogy “Maps,” that has cemented his reputation as a heavy weight champion, in contemporary literature. “Maps,” uses the second person narration, to discuss cultural identity and post-colonialism; set during and around with the Ogaden Conflict of nineteen-seventy seven. Farah himself has described his purpose of writing as “keeping his country alive by writing about it.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Kenya – Is a Kenyan author, who may be best described as using magical realism, in order to deal with African dictatorships, and traditional African beliefs. In this way, Thiong'o writes satirical and allegorical works that deal with contemporary political matters; without being obstinately realistic in their depiction. What does make this author interesting though is that he writes in a traditional African language. He chooses not to write in colonial English. He writes in Gikuyu / Kikuyu a tribal language. This is a bold move in keeping his language alive, where he may find his work more accessible by others countries, because of English being more accepted.
Mia Couto – Mozambique – Is Perhaps the most interesting author under the possibilities from Africa. First and foremost Mia Couto is actually the son of Portuguese immigrants, who had moved to the former colony. This does not lessen him though as a African possibility as he is a Mozambique author. Couto’s literary career started when he was fourteen. Some of his poems were published in the local newspaper. Three years later Couto went to university (Eduardo Mondlane University) to study medicine. Around this time the anti-colonial guerilla group “Mozambique Liberation Movement,” was struggling to overthrow colonial rule. After the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, and the overthrow of the Estado Novo regime, Mozambique was on it was to independence. From there Couto’s studies were postponed to become a journalist for the Liberation Movement. Couto worked as a journalist, until nineteen-eighty five, to finish his studies in biology. Couto is considered one of the strongest voices of Mozambique literature. He has experienced the ‘African Experience,’ in the ways of independence, and use magical realism, to discuss a magical and fairy-tale like violent land. This year alone (twenty-thirteen) Couto won the Camões Prize; the most prestigious Portuguese language award.
Ben Okri – Nigeria – The youngest author to win the Booker Prize, at the age of thirty two; for his third novel “The Famished Road.” Ben Okri is one of the leading authors of Africa. Okri is hard to categorize within genre. Because of his realism and the depiction of the Spirit World, Okri is best called a magical realist. This goes against any postmodern claim; because of his affinity that there is something ahistorical and transcendent universal truths. That being said Okri does not identify himself as a magical realist, claiming that such a title is lazy on the parts of critics. Okri’s childhood and the belief of different realities has lead to the magical elements of writing and the questioning of a universal reality: “I grew up in a tradition where there are simply more dimensions to reality: legends and myths and ancestors and spirits and death [. . .]” This is why Okri is often compared to other authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie.
Ondjaki – Angola – I mention Ondjaki to humour myself. The author is far too young to win the award, at the age of thirty six. Yet from what I have read, Ondjaki deals heavily with the political situation of Angola. Ondjaki is a rising star of Angola and the African continent. Whose works are a stunning depiction and example of African Letters. I look forward to Ondjaki’s works of the future, and to see what he comes up with.
Middle Easte –
Adunis – Syria – Adunis is the grandfather of all modern Arabic poetry. With the turmoil and civil war happening within Syria thanks to the Arab Spring, Syria has been placed under the microscope; which also brings Adunis to the forefront. The greatest criticism or backlash was when Tomas Transtromer won the Nobel in two-thousand and eleven. Peter Englund the Permanente Secretary of the Swedish Academy had cited that the award is not given on political grounds; citing that such a notion is “literature for dummies.” Still Adunis literary merit alone is grand and prolific. The author has reshaped Arabic poetry, and has become in a sense a rebellious poetic figure; often breaking the rules of established Arabic poetry. Adunis has also helped spread the works of Transtromer in the Arabic world.
Amos Oz – Israel – Amos Oz recently took the Franz Kafka Prize earlier this year. Other authors who have won the prize are Harold Pinter and Elfriede Jelinek. Both went on to win the Nobel. Politically speaking, Amos Oz in regards to Israel and the Arabic world has been cited as a left leaning intellectual. He supports the idea of a two state system between Israel and Palestine. Yet this does not foreshadow his own literary merit and output. He is known for his realistic characters, and ironic touch; with the accompanying landscape and life in the kibbutz. All wrapped up with a slight critical tone.
Asia and Indo-subcontinent –
Ko Un – South Korea – Ko Un is often called a Zen poet. He is an embodiment of eastern philosophy. This categorization is also works because Ko Un, was once a Buddhist monk. Ko Un’s poems are accessible and universal. Individual stories have littered his poems; creating a large tapestry of what his poems come to represent, and discuss. His “Ten Thousand Lives,” has been a monument as the poet writes about all the lives he has encountered over his life time. Other aspects of his poetry, is a deep universal humanistic approach; as well as at times an all engrossing sadness – which has been brought on by the divided Korea’s, and the subsequent Korean War. Ko un has also written memories/autobiography, fiction, travel essays, essays, drama, and translations of classic Chinese. Still Ko Un is known primarily as a poet.
Oh-Jung Hee – South Korea – Oh-Jung Hee, is the Korean Virginia Woolf. Jung Hee is known for her feminist stance in the patriarchal Korean society. Were women authors have always been pushed aside in favour of male writers. Jung Hee first work was very imagistic. Her later period though has now mellowed into family life and domesticity; a trap for women.
Anita Desai – India – Is interesting because she is an Indian writer, literal language English, but also a woman. She was a founder of ‘Lyrical India,’ also known as the Indian Boom. Because she is a woman, many feel that she has a change, as the Swedish Academy will attempt to fill the women ‘quota,’ – also because she is a Indian author she may have another chance. Though still with the Nobel being awarded last year to a Asian author it may be unlikely.
Vijaydan Detha – India – A prominent Indian writer; who specialises in short stories. Though this name is a new one to me, the author is well known in Hindi literature. He is known as the “Shakespeare of Rajasthan Literature.” In two-thousand and eleven his name was listed as a contender for the Nobel Prize. Still one Detha is almost ninety years old, which may not play in his favour. Though specialising in the short story is interesting, seeing as no author has just been a short story author, and awarded the Nobel. The closely though would be the Russian author Ivan Bunin. Detha’s work is inspired and has a folktale and traditional story elements to them.
Europe –
Yves Bonnefoy – France – Frances preeminent poet, is now ninety years old. He is a prolific writer. He has written numerous collections of poetry; several books of tales; countless critical studies and essays on art; as well as a dictionary on mythology. Bonnefoy was breiefly part of the Surrealist movement. His poetry is deeply detailed with water, bread, stone, tree, blood and so on. His poetry is austere, and immediate and intimate. Creating a empathetic tie with reader and poet. His poetry embodies the common good. Yet Bonnefoy’s age works against him.
Philippe Jaccottet-- Switzerland – Is another poet. The grand Swiss poet has translated the likes of Rilke, Goethe, and Homer, into French along with his own work. Jaccottet’s poetry deals with the secrets, and the beauty of the world, and how it is both fleeting and all too real; yet avoids capture. Jaccottet’s later poems are prose poems. They deal with a constant awareness of death. Utilizing a hunted animal as a metaphor for the fate in which we all share. Jaccottet however is eighty eight years old, which may play against him.
Anita Konkka – Finland – Anita Konkka is not a well-known writer to English readers. Anita Konkka has only one book translated into English. She lacks significant representation in the English language. Yet she has been anthologized in the Best European Fiction twenty eleven. Anita Konkka writes about dreams, and their relation to the waking world and reality. She has been publishing since the late seventies, and has written essays and radio-dramas; as well as a dream book. She is a scholar of love and its relationships – the entire spectrum; problematic and not. Yet not with pity, but instead with a friendly emphatic understanding.
Peter Nadas – Hungary – From Hungary there is Peter Nadas. Hungarian literature has been a rising star in Eastern Europe. Peter Nadas is known for his depiction of isolation and alienation, from behind the Iron Curtain. Nadas is however most importantly known for his innovation and stylistic tendencies. His novel “A Book of Memories,” took him twelve years to write. It also earned Nadas comparison to Proust. Yet this book, was just the beginning of the authors next longer piece of work. “Parallel Stories,” is a door stop doozy of a book. It runs to about one thousand, five hundred, and twenty pages long. It was written in three volumes, in Hungary. It took eighteen years to write. Nadas work is strong, detailed, innovative and of course extremely demanding.
László Krasznahorkai – Hungary – Krasznahorka is the shining star of Hungarian letters. He is in high demand with the literary elite. He is the master of long winding sentences; and the Beckett and Bernhard, avoidance of the paragraph. Krasznahorkai deals with the metaphysical in his work. Along with a constant feeling and threat of apocalyptic doom. That with his long winding sentences, lack of paragraph breaks, it leaves one with a feeling of claustrophobia. Though only a few of his books have been translated, he is known as an amazing writer – well renowned in his native Hungary and Germany.
Ersi Sotiropoulos – Greek – Only two Greek writers have won the Nobel Prize. Both of who were poets. The last author was Odysseas Elytis in nineteen-seventy nine. Only two books by Ersi Sotiropoulos have been translated in English. Again she has been lack representation in the English language. Still what I have been able to gather is that Sotiropoulos is one of Greece’s most acclaimed writers. She was the first Greek writer to win both the Greek National Book Award, as well as the Greece’s Book Critics Award. Ersi Sotiropoulos is a prolific author of short stories, novels as well as poetry. She writes in a naked bare bone style, with great depth, and natural lucidity. Though her prose do away with beginnings, middles and ends.
Kiki Dimoula – Greece – Kiki Dimoula is the foremost female poet of Greece. Her poems have an economy of words, often to the points of being minimalist in structure. Leaving a lot of white on the page. This however works in Dimoula’s favour. Like a faded photograph Dimoula’s, poems come to symbolise the fading completeness of existence, and the eventual oblivion and nothingness that awaits us all. That being said Dimoula retains a sense of hope in a troubled and unforgiving world. Her themes orbit dissolution, especially, that of the post-war era, and the civil war that followed, which lead to the coup and another dictatorship.
Leonard Nolens – Belgium – Nolens is the giant of Flemish poetry and literature. Leonard Nolens is a poet and a diarist. His debut was in; nineteen sixty-nine; with baroque and experimental poetry. By the nineteen eighties, Nolen’s poetry became more sober. His work is known for its serene reflection on oneself and on others. Leonard Nolens is haunted by his themes, especially the desire to escape ones identity. Still all of Nolens poetry is known for its profound thoughts. His journals are fascinating because they straddle the line between poetry and identity freely. His most recent collection “Tell The Children We’re No Good,” shows a departure away from the singular ‘I,’ figure that most poets use.
Javier Marías – Spain – Marías is one of Spains most beloved writers. Under Franco’s dictatorship, social realism was the norm, and was the only approved literature. The kind of literature, which awakens the consciousness of others, to the atrocities around them. I am not well versed with Marías much on a personal level. He is a beloved figure in Spain; a bestselling author, and a translator.
Olga Tokarczuk – Poland – Tokarczuk is still a bit young, but her merits alone are strong. She writes her novels in a ‘fragmented consciousness,’ style. In other words: she writes her novels with brief vignettes and stories. Her work is fragmented and beautiful. Mixing the mythological, and the supernatural, along with metaphysical to create a varied and colourful tapestry of the human condition. Only two of her novels have been translated as of yet: “Primeval and Other Times,” and “House of Day, House of Night.” Both novels depicted small communities and their personal histories, and the impact of the larger history. Tokarczuk’s work is entertaining, thought provoking, accessible and thoroughly beautifully written.
Adam Zagajewski – Poland – Another Neustadt International Prize for Literature Laureate; Zagajewski is a prolific contemporary poet. Poland, has housed famous poets Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska – both won the Nobel Prize; and both were the two living Laureates of Literature from Poland until two-thousand and when Miłosz died. Zagajewski was once a protest poet, under the communist regime. But has since moved away from that title, and class, and has since moved towards other more pressing themes. The most notable is the presence of history in the ordinary day to day life of the present.
South and Central America –
Rodrigo Rey Rosa – Guatemala – Rodrigo Rey Rosa is elusive. He is known to travel extensively. In all biographies, each wills state that not much is known about him, until he moved to New York. He is known to have been have been the protégé under Paul Bowles, becoming his literary executor, after his death. Rose has based books on and around North African myths and the myths of the indigenous people of South and Central America.
Eduardo Galeano – Uruguay – Galeano is one of the most prolific and renowned Uruguayan writers, and journalists. He has shown a keen detail for history and interest in Latin American history. Yet if one were to describe his work the following passage from “The Nobodies,” does it best:
“Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them – will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms. The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way. Who are not, but could be. Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. Who don’t have culture, but folklore. Who are not human beings, but human resources. Who do not have faces, but arms. Who do not have names, but numbers. Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper. The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”
Dalton Trevisan – Brazil – Trevisan is the short story writer from Brazil. His stories are known for their colloquial language, and often brutal discussion of the lower class life of his home city of Curitiba. His work is known for being refined, and compared to that of being haiku in prose. Only one of his books have been translated and published in English. That was in nineteen-seventy two with: “The Vampire of Curitiba.” With the use of popular drama, underlying violence, lack of morals and often called perverse tales, revealing the underside of society.
Australia and Oceania –
Gerald Murnane – Australia – Is a reclusive author. It is famously stated that Murnane almost never leaves the state of Victoria. His first works were grammatically interesting, with long weaving sentences, and were largely autobiographical as they dealt with his childhood and adolescents. Murnane is a curious creature. His later works are known for being fascinating and obscure. He is not well known, but he has a devoted readership, in Australia and internationally. He is known as one of the best writers, currently working in the English language. He is admired by J.M. Coetzee a Nobel Laureate.
Honourable Mentions –
I have a renewed vigor and enjoyment for the short story now. This is why these two authors are mentioned. While some authors go out of their way to write a thousand pages, phone book epic – these two authors choose to write, in the intensity of the moment. But also use flashes of memory and dialogue to create elaborate and beautiful back stories. They tackle the human condition with empathy and sympathy. They are ironic; and they are comical.
Alice Munro – Canada – One cannot help but be a bit, bias towards their own country. Alice Munro is a perennial favourite for the Nobel. The Canadians that actually aware of the Nobel Prize, each year hold their breaths (for short periods of times) that Alice Munro may receive it. She is the best shot. Her stories have been compared to novels in depth, and characterization. Her themes are secrets, coming of age in the back drop of small towns, as well as the conflict that comes with small town morals and values; and family expectations. Later works encompass the trials of middle age, of loneliness, and in a sense a keen awareness of the passing of time. Obsessively almost Munro deals with the passage of time and its lament that it leaves. Her work has been described as encompassing what it means to be a human being. The desire for love and for work – and the failings at both of them. The short comings of being individuals. As well as the epiphany that sheds light on the moment.
William Trevor – Ireland – William Trevor is considered one of the greatest short story writers of all time. He is also an accomplished playwright and novelist. Trevor though is known primarily as a short story writer. He has had a long career over some decades; and has written acute observations of the human condition within this timeframe. He is known for his comical touch, and dealing with Ireland and England equally in his stories. As well as the great divide between Protestant and Catholic. His later novels have become more complex and sophisticated both in style, and in ways of dealing with the subject matter.
There you have it Gentle Reader. My list of different authors. All while attempting to avoid the usual suspects. Did I achieve the goal? No. At least not entirely. I did add some of my own hopes for the prize, as everyone does. But for now Gentle Reader, we wait to see what happens, in October, and update the list as other speculative lists are released.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
