In
less than two months Gentle Reader, we will learn who this years Nobel Laureate
in Literature will be. Following is a list of 94 writers listed for this year’s
speculation list. These 94 writers were chosen for a myriad of reasons;
however, at no point do I cement or affirm with any certainty that any of the
listed writers will receive the award. I have chosen the authors based off
personal taste, and careful consideration, after doing research and reviewing
of their work (on a limited basis) and believe they have no more or less of a
chance than any other writer who is considered in contention for the award.
The
following list Gentle Reader is categorized in the usual format: Continent and
or geographical region, then sub-categorized into country/origin, then country
of exile (if applicable), and literary language (if applicable).
The
list is not designed for national interest or advocacy for another. Its merely an
attempt at easier navigation.
Thank-you
& Please Enjoy,
M.
Mary
Africa—
Mia
Couto – Mozambique – There is no denying Mia Couto is one of the most
internationally recognized Portuguese language writers. Furthermore, Couto is
one of the most critically acclaimed writers of former Portuguese Colonial Africa.
Mia Couto is the son of Portuguese emigrants heading into exile, to evade and
protest the fascist politics of Salazar; while also being a child of Mozambique,
describing himself as a: “White African,” which exemplifies his literary
preoccupation of combining contrary perspectives to create a paradoxical
narrative ruminating on post-colonial themes and concepts, such as new and
often mercurial identity, and the crisis that form there. His birth and
heritage provide enough to exemplify this contrary perspective, while being a
mere young adult when Mozambique gained independence, and then two years later
fell into a brutal civil war that lasted for decades. The repercussions of
independence and rippling colonial influences reverberated throughout
Mozambique, who found itself as a pawn between contrary perspectives, of what
independence looked like. During this time, Couto worked as a journalist and
recorded the events as they unfolded. The horrors, terrors, and traumatic
effects of the civil war, along with its brutal scarring of the natural
landscape (such as landmines) have been used in Couto’s works, with a
fantastical flare to make sense of the world gone mad. “Sleepwalking Land,” is
perhaps Couto’s most famous novel, exploring the repercussions and terrors of
the civil war with potent beauty, and a fabulist flare for melancholy as it
relays the tragic events of war and suffering. “Sleepwalking Land,” and his
subsequent stories and novels, recalls Couto’s unique use of language, blending
the Portuguese of the colonial rule and the indigenous dialects found in
Mozambique, as well as global influencing languages such as English, Mia Couto
crafts unique neologisms to create a poetic patchwork of language to compel his
narratives. Though often referred to as a ‘magical realist,’ in the same vein
as Gabriel Garcia Marquez or other Latin American Boom writers, Couto rejects
the term. Mia Couto has gone as far to clarify that from an African perspective
(as in with a South American perspective) the concept of magical and realism
are separate concepts, but rather synonymous with the reality as its being
observed and the incomprehensible acts taking place, such as ox that evaporates
into butterflies, which in fact is an ox being blown up by a landmine. The
poetic fable and metaphor are not necessarily a magical trope, but a contorted
lens in which the situation is being observed. This otherwise contrary and
paradoxical perspectives combined with the poetic beauty of language both
inherited and plundered, makes Mia Couto one of the most unique and compelling
African writers at work today.
Ben
Okri – Nigeria – As of late the notion of postcolonial acknowledgement and
reconciliation has become a topic of conversation both politically and explored
in the literary realm. Since his initial debut, Ben Okri has been considered
one of the foremost African representatives in post-colonial and postmodern
literature, where he has been favorably compared to both Salman Rushdie and
(Nobel Laureate) Gabriel Garcia Marquez, both for his postcolonial
preoccupations as well as his reliance and utilization of magical realism
tropes and African folk tales in his literary work. In 1991, Ben Okri came to
the attention of the greater English-speaking language and readership when he
won the Booker Prize (then the youngest winner at 32) for his famous novel:
“The Famished Road,” which is still remarked as being his most important and
recognized novel to date. The novel blends magical realism, folk traditions, and
the rich colourful life of Lagos and Nigeria. The ability to utilize both the
traditions of African storytelling, myths, legends, and spirits in conjunction
with the modern African state in a postcolonial world has proven to be Ben
Okri’s literary hallmark, with “The Famished Road,” being the work that has
built his reputation and secured it. Despite minimal press coverage now
surrounding Okri’s literary activities, he still publishes and edits, and
remains one of African continents most important post-colonial writers.
Wilma
Stockenström – South Africa – One of the most important Afrikaans
language writers currently at work in contemporary South African Literature, Wilma
Stockenström is a playwright, poet, translator, casual novelist, as well as an
actress. Stockenström’s first love before turning to a writer was theatre. She
studied the theatrical studies at university and acted on stage, before
retiring to the wings to pick up the pen and draft works of literary construct.
She wrote a couple of one-act plays, before turning to poetry. Stockenström’s
poetry is recognized for being unadorned, lacking poetic fashions, and
disregarding trivial musicality. Stockenström’s poetic language disregards the
frivolity of poetic fads and trends in favour of plain, sober, and
straightforward language, which is sharpened with ironic precession. Along with
eschewing the haughty, ostentatious, and conceited airs of overcooked poetry, Wilma
Stockenström shifted the perspective from the intrapersonal, self-centered, and
absorbed ‘I,’ narrative, to one that provided commentary on the human condition.
Exploring the external, the interpersonal, and the engagement with the
environment. In this, Wilma Stockenström maintains the same poetic
predilections as the late Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wislwa Szymborska who
eschewed the confessional narcissistic narratives of previous generations and
employed an observational style that was both gentle and ironic as commented on
the human condition. In the English language, Wilma Stockenström gained
attention through her fragmentary and poetic novel: “The Expedition to the
Baobab Tree.”
Tierno Monénembo – Guinea – Tierno Monénembo is one
of Guinea’s most renowned writers, is a prominent French Language writer to
emerge from post-colonial Africa. Monénembo’s work is particularly informed of
the blight of the African intellectuals, who find their home in disarray after
colonialism, and seek opportunities abroad, and the difficulties they encountered
in life in foreign lands. Tierno Monénembo has taken a particular interest in
historical narratives, often detailing the lives of the Fula People, such as
the extraordinary life of Addi Bâ, a Fula resistance fighter during the Second
World War, who the Nazi’s deemed: “The Black Terrorist.” Tierno Monénembo
remains persistently concerned with the colonial and post-colonial histories of
the African continent and seeks to elevate the intellectual standings of the
continent to a broader audience, through a process of continual codification of
memory in historical, personal, and anthropological scope. By preoccupying
oneself with the past they are able to gain an understanding of the trajectory
that shapes the future. Yet, without fail, the same mistakes are perpetrated
repeatedly. The same crimes, the same violence, the same political uncertainty,
the same oppressive atmospheres only with different perpetrators. After the
Rwandan Genocide of nineteen ninety-four, Tierno Monénembo became one of
writers tasked with reviewing and writing about the event. This act would
change his perspective on the concept of writing, as many of the writers chosen
for the project, either were firsthand witnesses of the atrocities or objective
observers, who attempted understand the horror which had taken place. In this,
Tierno Monénembo, was an observer tasked to make sense and comprehend the
unimaginable societal break down of order and convey with either eloquence and
honesty how a country devolved into an uncontrolled sprawl and spree of
slaughter and violence. Inevitably it swayed back to the wounds of colonialism,
which had finally become to raw and rotten to ignore any longer. In this, Tierno
Monénembo works to survey the African continent in a mired of contexts, from
colonial to post-colonial, and the dawning hope of a new world, a better world,
riddled with the basic idealism and principles of humanity.
José Eduardo Agualusa – Angola – Along with Mia
Couto, José Eduardo Agualusa is one of the most successful and read Portuguese
language voices ringing from the post-colonial African continent. Where Mia
Couto from Mozambique won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in
two-thousand and fourteen, José Eduardo Agualusa went on to receive the
International Dublin Literary Award in two-thousand and seventeen. Both Mia
Couto and José Eduardo Agualusa are influenced by the histories of their
respective nations. Yet, both have a particular relationship to their
respective nation’s historical narratives, as their perspective is tinted by
the notion of being the outsider, the colonial, the conqueror. Mia Couto
explores the historical through the infusion of folktales, traditions, ceremony
and blending quilted language, with an anthropologist’s curiosity, to depict a
world which cautiously remains in flux between the grounded certainty, and the
flights of imaginative fancy. José Eduardo Agualusa maintains a historical
approach to his literary narratives, firmly grounded in the context provided,
but maintains its own imaginative flights. Take for example Agualusa’s
celebrated novel: “A General Theory of Oblivion,” about a woman who grows
increasingly concerned about the Angolan War of Independence. As Angola begins
to shake the off the oppressive yoke of colonial influence, she becomes
increasingly concerned for her future. Instead of fleeing to Portugal, the
expat barricades and entombs herself in her apartment for nearly three decades.
Her only contact with outside world is through the conversations she hears from
her neighbors, the world viewed from her window, and the radio which eventually
dies. She distills her experiences, observations, and eavesdropping down into
diaries, before documenting them on the walls; all through the historical
context of Angola being torn by colonialism, and the influence of other
exacting nations: Soviet Union, United States, and the insurgency of South
African fighters. José Eduardo Agualusa other novels carry the same
preoccupation and concern with the social and political context of Angola and
the African continent in the world. Its historical destitution are never far,
and the atrocities, reprehensible cruelties, and the prior mistakes are often left
behind; through the inventiveness of the imagination, as characters seek to
become chameleons, changing colour, lives, and pasts to greet a new era, and a
new world without concern for the previous episodes. This is the world of José
Eduardo Agualusa, one of historiographic understanding, while presenting
imaginative and postmodern irony, to liven it up, and when necessary, add
allegorical elements of forewarning and foreshadowing of impending disaster, be
it ecological or human.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Kenya – There is no denying that
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is a perennial Nobel candidate. First and foremost, Thiong’o
is a titan of modern African literature, who is not just interested in
exploring post-colonial and postmodern themes in his work, but also intently
interested in the preservation of traditional African culture and languages,
whereby he writes in a traditional indigenous language of Gikuyu, where he has
operated as translator of his work into English. The work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
straddles different forms: epic novels, short stories, poetry, children’s literature,
plays, essays, and memoirs. Renowned for his epic novels such as: “Weep Not
Child,” “A Grain of Wheat,” “Wizard of the Crow,” – Thiong'o’s work is praised
for its epicist perspective that is acutely aware of the historical and
contemporary situation of the Kenyan and African experience in a post-colonial
landscape. “Weep Not Child,” is a vanguard novel, being the first English
language novel to be published by an East African writer, under ‘James Ngugi,’
(Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s birth name) and details the relationship between Africans
and white colonizers, with a critical eye of the colonial settlers, and the
eventual rise of the Mau Mau uprising. “Weep Not Child,” was praised by the
late Chinua Achebe, who championed it in the English language. “A Grain of
Wheat,” follows suit of “Weep Not Child,” as a historical novel detailing the
struggles for Kenyan independence and the violence that is woven into Kenya’s
history from colonial rule into post-colonial independence. “Wizard of the
Crow,” was Thiong'o’s first book after twenty-plus years and is one of his
novels which had reclaimed the Gikuyu language that had been stifled by
colonial rule. The novel is not historical in scope, but fabulist and satirical
in scope, employing the orating traditions of the Bantu people. “Wizard of the
Crow,” is epic in scope and scale. Beyond his literary accomplishments, Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong'o is a deserving candidate for the effort and work he has attributed
to the preservation and restoration of African identity, traditions, and
language which have been erased, bleached, or whitewashed during colonialism.
Though I do offer hesitation in this regard. The Swedish Academy’s negligence
or inability to award more African based writers, leaves any writer awarded
from that continent to be seen as a ‘diversity pick,’ or an appeasement
decision that meets a quota. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has enough merit to dissuade
such superficial concerns, but the criticism undercuts and underlines the decision,
nonetheless.
Boubacar
Boris Diop – Senegal – Boubacar Boris has been called one of the most original
and exciting contemporary writers at work on the African continent. His most
famous novel “The Book of Bones,” is a fictional account of the notorious
Rwandan genocide, which ripped through the country with bloodthirsty fervor
from April to July in 1994. Diop’s most recent work is: “Doomi Golo,”
(originally published in 2006 and translated into English in 2016) is the only
novel to be written in Wolof and is the first novel written in Wolof to be
translated into English. Dio’s literary work deals with modern African
realities and issues: unstable governments; violence that happens every day it
is considered commonplace; corruption and poverty. Beyond his literary leaning
and writings, Boubacar Boris Diop has also written for theatre and composed
screenplays for films, along with his political focused essays. Diop has also
written journalist pieces for both the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung,
and a Paris publication Afrique, perspectives et réalités, while
also writing and editing for his own newspaper in Senegal.
Antjie Krog – South Africa – The contemporary South
African poet, literary theorist, and academic has been described by Joan
Hambidge, as the Pablo Neruda of Afrikaans poetry, her first foray in the
literary world, whereby she published her first collection of poetry at the age
of seventeen. The poetry of Antjie Krog contemplates and discusses powerful
themes, ranging from gender politics, identity, race, salvation, and of course
apartheid. Her work can take a slight personal and almost autobiographical tone
in discussing the changes of age, time, and gender and its effects on an
individual’s identity. Identity in her work often goes beyond gender as well
and encompasses a strange desire to change her race beyond the won endowed to
her by birth. In this, Antjie Krog presents a unique and political conscious
perspective of a poet, observing a strange society at work, one influx of
change of resentment and in need of reconciliation. Krog’s work moves beyond
just poetry as well and encompasses finely tuned prose forms. The first and
most famous work of prose is: “Country of My Skull,” which recounts the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission instituted to bring closure and truth, to the
previous discrimination, racism, and political abuse caused by apartheid in the
southern African state. The second prose work presents a postmodern blend of
different forms: prose, personal narrative, poetry, interviews, and
journalistic reportage to craft a deconstructuralist narrative, recounting the
evolution of South African society away from apartheid, as well as the erosion
of Afrikaans language and culture in South African society in favour of a
strange vernacular English, as Afrikaans is seen as the language of the
oppressor, the racist, the separatist, the great divider of the country, and
yet remains within its borders.
Nuruddin
Farah – Somalia – Along with Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong'o, Nuruddin Farah is a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize
for Literature. Farah’s first novel: “From a Crooked Rib,” was herald as one of
the most important literary works to have come from East Africa. The novel is
written from the perspective of an orphaned woman and unflinchingly depicts
what have been described as savage and brutal customs of Somalia concerning
woman, who are raised and sold off as if they were cattle. His most recent
novel: “North of Dawn,” tackles the alienation and complications of the East
African experience in now a more globally accessible world. The worlds of
traditional Islamic religious doctrines and the freedom of the western world
meet head on, which causes further strife, complications, and encourages (even
if inadvertently) further conviction and violence. Each of Nuruddin Farah’s
novels detail the violence of Somalia as it attempts to recover in the wake of
the postcolonial world, which suffers political corruption, oppression, civil
war, and violence that breeds further violence. Escapes to the grander world
only prove alienating and discomforting. While attempts at changing or shifting
political movements at home prove to be fruitless, as violence breeds further violence,
and the cycle continues spinning within itself. Despite the international
acclaim and appeal that Nuruddin Farah brings, there are concerns and cynical
skepticism that Nuruddin Farah will not receive the Nobel Prize for Literature,
as he has not done so yet. Though in the Swedish Academy’s defense, they are
often glacial in making decisions. It is rumored that the late Nobel Laureate Tomas
Tranströmer had been nominated for the award since the 1990’s to finally
receive the award in 2011.
Ivan Vladislavic – South Africa –Ivan Vladislavic is
only starting to gain a foothold in translation on the world literature stage.
South African literature was previously eclipsed by others (Nobel Laureates, Nadine
Gordimer, and JM Coetzee). Where other writers of South Africa have found
inspiration or felt compelled to comment on the troubled racial injustice that
plagued the country through the last Century, Ivan Vladislavic has taken an
otherwise unique and surreal approach to the landscape, the world, and the
human condition, where he explores the possibilities of literature in its
relation to communicating the human experience both on the personal and in the
universal context. His one novel or short story collection or digression on the
concept of memory, landscape, and people: “Portrait with Keys,” is not unified
by an overarching narrative, story, or plot. Instead, the work is composed of
numerous fragments, prose snippets, vignettes, scenes, and stories concerning
Johannesburg through ghosts and gardens, memories, habit, concepts of home,
journeys undertaken, wandering observations, changing perceptions, friendships,
and mortality. It is a pastiche novel painting a portrait of a city, through
its side streets, and its unique characteristics and populace. It should come
as no surprise then that Ivan Vladislavic is renowned for his shorter proses,
where there has been a steady increase in translation over the past few years.
His shorter prose provides a surreal, postmodern, and postructuralist
perspective of the world, one which rejects societal and human attempts at
instituting either order or control, an echoing sentiment of the strange
paradox of the human condition: despite our unity in on the most atomized
level, we are all still inherently different. In this a critic or a reader may
find an allegory or metaphorical element providing inclinations to the
discussion of apartheid in South Africa, while all the same the work transcends
the national and seeks to make sense of the more philosophical, existential,
and ethereal components of the human context, while ultimately being unable to
measure it. The short story, and further fragmentation of form, is therefore a
perfect literary style for an author whose decries and sighs at the continual
need for order, and harmonic responses to the natural, instinctual and by
nature chaotic world.
Northern
Africa, the Middle East & Central Asia—
Agi
Mishol - Israel - In describing Agi Mishol, the late critic Isaac Meyers commented
(regarding her English language poetry translation collection: "Look
There,") that Mishol is a: "highly respected and decorated, and her
poems grab public attention." It sounds foreign--even absurd--to promote
and propagate a poet as popular among the reading public. Afterall poetry has
been exiled to the highest dusty shelf of any bookshelf; forgotten and
alienated in its ivory tower prestige. And yet, Agi Mishol is one of those
poets who has descended from the forgotten peaks of the poetic perch and has
gained the prominence—and respect—of the reading public through her verse.
Through 16 collections of poetry, Agi Mishol has delighted the poetry world
with her verse that is both socially aware and observational, while also
maintaining personal introspection and private poetic predilections. The poet
and critic Joel Brouwer remarked that Mishol was able to: “take up political
subjects with a sly delicacy reminiscent of the Polish Poet Wislwa Szymborska's
best work.” The lack of blatant political ideological positions or demagoguery,
attributes to Agi Mishol's renown and success. Hailing from Israel there is no
doubt the question of political conviction and allegiance will always be
directed at her person. The mercurial fluidity in which these topics are
handled, will inevitably disarm (because they cannot be sated) any declaration
or promotion of one political stance or support over another. Further praise
has been provided to Agi Mishol as a poet from the late Amos Oz (a favourite to
win the Nobel Prize for Literature) who praised her work: "Agi Mishol's
poems know how to tell a tale, to sing a song and also dance – all at once and
the same time. I love the splendid surprises in them, the subtle and exact
sadness, and the mysterious manner by which she makes this sadness overflow
with hidden joy." Perhaps it is with this empathetic spirit, the personal
insights with a cunning bite of ironic humour ("Geese," for example,
or "No Casualties Reported."), does Agi Mishol bring poetry to the
forefront as an eternal and ancient mode of expression to describe the human
condition: flawed, perilous, joyful, and filled with life.
Adunis
– Syria – Arabic language poetry will always canonize Adunis as the greatest
revolutionary poetic voice of the 20th Century. Warmly and welcomely
compared to T.S. Eliot who also revolutionized and modernized English language
poetry in the early 20th Century, there is no denying that Adunis is
by and large one of the most important poets of world literature. The fact that
Adunis has been overlooked or explicitly denied the Nobel Prize for Literature
is one of those questionable decisions of the Swedish Academy has made. Is it
because the Adunis’s literary significance has already been secured in the
history books? Is awarding him the Nobel Prize for Literature considered to
‘predictable,’ and therefore would lead to questions of accusations and
allegations that the Swedish Academy has lost its originality and imaginative
grace, reducing itself to an institution that merely pins recognition onto the
giants who are already decorated and coronated with recognition, the Nobel
Prize for Literature merely becomes yet another feather in the cap, another
tick on the box. In other words, the Nobel Prize for Literature becomes the
final milestone. Despite this speculated hesitation there can be no denying
that Adunis is undoubtfully one of the most important writers and poets of the
last half century, who has on a singular level, revolutionized a regional
concept of poetry and poetic forms, rejuvenating it for generations to come.
Denying Adunis is on the same mistake as denying Leo Tolstoy the Nobel Prize
for Literature, its an expectation that remains an expectation far after the
fact. Now at the age of 91, there is no denying that time is of the essence if
the Swedish Academy would decide to award Adunis the Nobel Prize for
Literature. The persistent overlooking of the poet will inevitably be marred as
one of the greatest oversights and missteps conducted by the academy in recent
memory; while on the contrary, awarding the poet the prize will inevitably be
considered well deserved but foreseen and predictable as well. Despite the
dichotomous debate that will certainly be conducted regarding the circumstances
of the poet; there can be no denying that Adunis is by and large one of the
most important writers and poets of not only the Arabic language, but also one
of the most important poets at work in on a global stage, who was the
contemporary and translator and propagator of other poets such as Yves Bonnefoy
and Tomas Tranströmer. Whether or not Adunis wins the Nobel Prize for
Literature is not known; but with or without the Nobel Prize for Literature,
Adunis remains one of the most important poets of contemporary poetry.
Ibrahim al-Koni – Libya – One of the most prolific,
translated and critically acclaimed writers of the Arabic language literature, Ibrahim
al-Koni is considered a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Rather than concerning himself with the blandness of theological concerns or
maintaining the approval or religious clerics who are often accused of
inspiring fanaticism within the youth, indoctrinating them violent baptisms to
stir up some misbegotten holy war. No, Ibrahim al-Koni maintains a firm
distance from such simpleton panhandling. In lieu of such digressions down
paths otherwise left alone, al-Koni’s work has been defined as magical realist
in scope, fabulist in perspective, and lyrically enchanting. True enough,
myths, legends, folklore, and other elements of legends, spiritual quests can
be found within his novels, as they ponder existential conundrums and
questions. For example, Ibrahim al-Koni’s novel: “Anubis,” tackles a spiritual
quest through the desert complete with all the legends and allegories one will
experience will traversing the shift sands of the landscape that will batter
and weaken an individual to a point where they question their grasp on reality,
and any faith they may have had with the world. For the young Tuareg youth in
search of his father, he will be granted an Eden like oasis in the desert, but
it too will succumb to civilization. He will be pursued by a romantic admirer,
and the world of sacrifice, slaughter, incest, and animal transformations are
all abound throughout the novel. It should be noted that Ibrahim al-Koni’s work
is a lot like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s, in the manner in which the author seeks to
capture and encapsulate in codified oral stories, folktales and legends of a
nomadic people (the Tuareg) into a modern novel, what remains can be a
bewildering and frustrating novel that readers may find it difficult to access,
read and review. “The Bleeding of the Stone,” is much the same way, maintaining
that allegorical sensation to the novel that praises the desert and culture of
those who call it home, while also providing spiritual questions and ponderings
to the nature of existence.
Amina
Saïd - Tunisia - Poetry often wavers between sound and silence. Spoken and
unspoken. Fullness and space. Perhaps as the literary profession (or vocation)
that is most in tune with the primeval soundscape of language, poets are
acutely aware that silence in conjunction with language can breed as much
meaning to the human experience than just a torrent of verbiage. Though the
continued description of poets as masters of silence, form, and necessary
words, diminishes their potency and poignancy, becoming in its stead cliches
and caricatures, two dimensional in form and practice. Yet, poets understand
the brevity and the white space of the page, more so than a prose writer. They
understand how absence and nothingness frames the fossilized emotive experience
and expression transcribed on the page. The text emerges like solitary islands
within a bleached ocean, screaming out to further distant shores, but lost
either in the calm of the sea; or the capricious waves sinking it. For the
Tunisian poet, Amina Saïd silence is a continued loyal theme and dog which
trails and shadows the poet and her personas throughout her collections of
poetry. Silence takes on varied expressions and forms throughout Saïd’s poetry.
It is not just language or sound muted or deprived from merriment or scream. It
takes the form of absence (both physical, visual, aurally); as well as being
expansive and open, consuming in the never-ending vastness of spaces. Perhaps
silence and absence are resistant functions to the crowdedness and
connectedness of today's world; the continued urban claustrophobia and social
sycophancy we have grown accustomed to. Language plays a unique identifiable
feature in the work of Amina Saïd's poetic work, as it grapples with the
concept of history, heritage, oppression, and colonization. Born to a Tunisian
father and a French mother, Amina Saïd learned to speak and write in both
French and Arabic from a young age. At university, Saïd studied English and
became a translator of the Filipino writer Francisco Sionil Jose (who writes in
English) into French. French, however, is the literary language of Amina Saïd,
a unique decision as it recalls both the cultured cosmopolitan fluidity of the
language being able to traverse the literary landscape of the world through a
common and recognized language, but also recalls a language of colonization and
oppressive forces through history. Despite the historical and linguistic
complications language possesses, Amina Saïd has found great success in the
French language as a poet, with Paris becoming her adoptive home from Tunisia.
Abdellatif
Laâbi – Morocco – One of the most important contemporary Moroccan writers at
work today, Abdellatif Laâbi has written novels, plays, and essays, but is well
revered for his critically acclaimed poetry. A contemporary and colleague of Tahar
Ben Jelloun, Laâbi was also persecuted by the Moroccan government for his opinions
and was imprisoned and tortured due to these same opinions. After being
released from prison Laâbi would leave Morocco and find himself taking refuge
in Paris, France where he found intellectual and political freedom. Free to
publish without censorship or threat of oppressive retaliatory action, Abdellatif
Laâbi wrote critically about the political situation of Morocco as it sought to
recover and regain itself from the colonial ruling period and enter a post-independent
and post-colonial world. Laâbi’s autobiographical novel: “The Bottom of the
Jar,” recounts a childhood lived during the twilight of French colonial rule,
as Morocco began the campaign to regain its sovereignty. What follows though is
a world envisioned and experience through the eyes of a child. Fes emerges like
a city of dreams. Its labyrinth streets and alleys become the corridors for
characters to share their stories; they are tunnels of mysteries; the
thresholds of journeys not yet taken. There are the dramas of family; the
turbulent and perpetual unfairness of childhood; and the enshrined freedom that
only children are in possession of, with their limited agency and overflowing
imagination. Yet it is the poetry of Abdellatif Laâbi that remains his
strongest suit, as it is a diverse palette of domestic lyrics of love and
longing, to the firebrand inspiring proclamations that demand change and social
reform, political renovations, and renewed respect for the basic principles of
human rights and freedoms.
Boualem Sansal – Algeria
– Writing carries many purposes, and writers carry this function out through
their own personal reasonings. Some writers write for enjoyment, others write
for more rational purposes, and others as Samuel Beckett stated best: aren’t
good for anything else. Some, however, like Boualem Sansal write out of
intellectual integrity, as well as protest, and dissidence against the sheer
disregard, and collapse of the basic civic due processes of society, which
becomes infected by fantasies of grandeur, dissatisfaction with other sects,
races, religions, people, and other homicidal/genocidal inclinations, which are
fueled by hatred, which they quickly retort they do not foster nor promote. As
an author Boualem Sansal is deemed an author who is exiled within his own
country. In Algeria, his works are banned from publication and distribution, so
it should go without saying they are indefinitely not deemed appropriate for
public consumption. The reason for this is simple, his work is highly critical
of the current political maneuvering of the Algerian government to set aside
all political sovereignty, as well as moral and intellectual integrity, in
embracing, and fostering Islamic fundamentalism, a movement which Boualem
Sansal has adamantly worked to undermining and dissuading against. His work is
noted for using political and historical allegories to reflect the current of
Algeria, and the Northern African Continent. Despite the disregard in which his
home country treats him, he is still considered one of the most profound and
important writers of the French language, and of the French language on the
African Continent.
Tahar
Ben Jelloun – Morocco [Language: French] – Perhaps a byproduct of colonial
attitudes, but high culture and business is often conducted in the French
language. This may be because French is considered more open, broader, and
accessible in the Western hemisphere, and therefore will lead to further
development in business relations with a broader clientele. Whereas Arabic
became the language of the streets, the everyday. It was the commonplace
tongue. Sadly, this perspective may continue to be increasingly persistent even
today, as writers of certain generations may find themselves at cross-roads of
which language to write in, be it French or Arabic. In the case of Tahar Ben
Jelloun, he has chosen to write in French, though his first language is Darija
(or western Arabic, or Maghrebi Arabic). Throughout his youth, Jelloun was
educated in both French and Arabic, and would complete post-secondary studies
in both languages, gaining a doctorate in social psychiatry in French, which
would become his literary language. While living in Morocco, Tahar Ben Jelloun
worked as a philosophy professor (before his doctorate) and helped found the
now defunct literary periodical Souffles, which took a critical stance
against the oppression of the Moroccan police and government. Jelloun
inevitably suffered for, as he was sentenced to a military prion style camp.
During this period, his initial poems were published in France, and Jelloun
would leave Morocco for France to continue his studies. It is in Paris that
Jelloun began to publish once again in Le Monde, afterwards his novel
“The Sand Child,” was published to critical acclaim; and his next novel “The Sacred
Night,” earned him the Prix Goncourt making Tahar Ben Jelloun the first
Moroccan writer to do so. The work of Jelloun maintains a strong cultural
understanding of North African culture, but also of the immigrant experience in
new lands, and the shadow of colonial history. His novels and work are noted
for their pedagogical stance, seeking to educate, and building further
understanding between competing cultures and identities through education and
empathetic comprehension. His monumental work of non-fiction “Explaining Racism
to My Daughter,” made Jelloun a public intellectual receiving continued
invitations to lecture and speak at universities and schools on the topic,
along with interviews with French news and media outlets. The strength,
however, of Jelloun’s literary merit resides in his novels and short stories,
with “The Sand Child,” “The Sacred Night,” and “The Wrong Night,” being
considered the hallmarks of his work.
Elias Khoury – Lebanon – A renowned and
critically acclaimed Lebanese playwright, novelist, and public intellectual;
like many Middle Eastern writers, Khoury is also a politically involved writer,
one who continually seeks political reform in a democratic vein. Despite his
western approved perspectives, Khoury retains a contrary and fluid intellect
and perspective that maintains a grounded and well-versed understanding
regarding the regional complexities that is the Middle East. For example, Elias
Khoury condemned (along with Adunis) and other writers a holocaust denial
conference being hosted in Beirut, when the Israeli government praise his open
protest to the conference, Khoury in turned criticized the Jewish nation for
its mistreatment and appropriation of Palestine land. Politics in reference to
the Middle East is not a graceful Viennese waltz, but a tepid and apprehensive
polka bouncing and skirting landmines or seeking to attempt to evade another
airstrike or an explosion. Khoury’s novels tackle these
same subjects, with his same objective and critical eye. His novels tackle
political subjects while avoiding the unnecessary pontificating moral
high-handed forms, preferred to simplify matters for western readers, and
glorify their stances or perspectives. Khoury not only eschews such nonsense,
but he also completely denies it and criticizes. Instead, Khoury presents the
ambiguities of the political dimensions of the Middle East going beyond simple
dichotomous complexities of the good versus the bad. Instead Khoury
fundamentally questions the behavior of people during these situations and
seeks to present an objective portrait via the use of internal monologues, conversations,
and statements originating from the characters to provide a spectrum oriented
panoramic viewpoint on the situation, both politically and individually. This
otherwise fair and balanced approach to writing about political measures in one
of the most contested and volatile regions of the world, make Elias Khoury one
of the most integrity defending writers of the Middle East, rising above the
pettiness of politics, while still providing complex treatise and thought
regarding the socioeconomic and political landscape of the region, undoubtfully
makes Elias Khoury one of the most well-respected writers of the region. A
writer of both literary quality and humanistic merit.
David Grossman – Israel
– The late Amos Oz was always favoured to win the Nobel Prize for Literature,
when referring to writers from Israel. Oz was rumored to have been favoured for
his mild political and often liberal leaning thought within the Middle East
political conundrum, even though it was often relayed in sobering and solemn
tones. Second, to Amos Oz, has always been David Grossman, who politically
speaking is blatantly a representative of the Israeli left-leaning cultural and
intellectual side of the spectrum, especially concerning his peace activism,
which is more involved in a tangible and palpable manner then the late Amos Oz,
who published articles, gave, lectures, and provided interviews, but stopped at
the participatory mark in regard to endorsing and promoting peace activism
within the region. The on-going dispute between Israel and Palestine, as a
subject has often been carefully avoided David Grossman’s work, until the death
of his son in 2006, during the Lebanon War. Afterwards, Grossman would publish
his novel: “To the End of the Land,” recounting the emotional strains families
experience as their loved ones are deployed during combat, especially during
the mandatory military conscription utilized by Israel and its government. The
novel was political as it was personal. David Grossman has been one of the most
renowned Israeli authors on the global stage. In 2017, he won the Booker
International Prize, for his novel: “A Horse Walks into a Bar,” where he was
shortlisted alongside his late contemporary colleague Amos Oz. David Grossman
remains a poignant writer of the Jewish experience in the region, but also of
the insurmountable grief families experience when their loved ones are sent off
on military service, and the superstitious rituals they perform to ward off harm.
Despite his literary renown, David Grossman is no stranger to skirmishes with
authorities due to his political activism, and in 2010 Grossman was beaten by
police during protests along the West Bank. Beyond the dirty affairs of
politics, and geopolitical disputes, David Grossman is a phenomenal and serious
writer, with striking literary tastes, humanistic eye, and a solemn perspective
of the human notion in the world continually divided.
Bahaa Taher – Egypt – Often called one of the
Egypt’s literary secrets, Bahaa Taher’s literary career has weathered and
outlasted both censorship, government persecution and purges, and finally their
own collapse, while Bahaa Taher though retreated into exile remained consistent
and continued to publish. In his earlier career, Bahaa Taher worked in radio,
being a founding member of Cario Radio Cultural Program, where he would
associate with Naguib Mahfouz, and help produce a radio platform for Greek
theatre to Beckett’s absurd comedies. Yet, when Taher advertised his left
leaning principles, viewpoints, and political views that were in direct
conflict with the ruling government of the day, Taher found himself dismissed
from his job. This placed Taher into a state of poverty, where he would finally
accept exile, where living in Geneva, Switzerland Taher worked as a translator
from the United Nations. Now returned from exile, Taher has received a warm and
welcoming response. Taher’s literary work details the experiences of exile;
with grace and a humanistic approach contemplates the complications of Egypt
and the Arabic world; he skirts and retracts any cheap sentiment regarding the
political and social situation of the region that fails to grasp the
anthropological, cultural, social, and historical developments of the region.
Bahaa Taher is a chronicler of the complexities and nuances of Egypt from its ancient
memory and glory to colonial history, to present complications. Taher remains
objective though critical in his exacting analysis of Egypt through the
times.
Hamid
Ismailov – Uzbekistan – Central Asia is that unfortunately neglected and
mercurial landscape, much like Eastern Europe, countries appear and disappear
on the map with ease. Allegiances and political influences eb and flow through
region, flooding it with ideological thoughts and demands for decades, then
receding into a purge, leaving the landscape battered and beaten. What exists
or takes hold within the waning years is often a totalitarian force, which
mimics the previous regimes behavior without the ideological indoctrination but
maintains the same brutal and brunt force to conduct its affairs. Post-Soviet
Uzbekistan is one such prime example, where accusations that slave and child
labour have been liberally utilized in the harvest and work in the nations
cotton fields. There has been noticeable control of the press, political
movement and thought, and extensive use of prisons to qual dissidence. In the
past few years, progressive changes have been made to absolve slave labour and
provide further freedoms to the citizens. To no surprise, Hamid Ismailov is not
welcomed or read in his native Uzbekistan where he has been exiled from.
Despite leaving Uzbekistan and living abroad in the United Kingdom and working
for the BBC World Service (leaving in 2019 after 25 years of service), Ismailov
remains interested and critical of Uzbekistan. Ismailov’s novels are intricate
postmodern and post-soviet parables that contemplate the unique trajectory of
the modern man in search of purpose and meaning in the world. The novel “The
Underground,” traces the coming-of-age story of a bastard child who is born in
the Soviet subway system by a Russian woman and a African athlete who competed
at the 1980’s Mosco Olympic Games. The novel becomes an intricate travelogue of
the city of Moscow through underground, and the development of a multiracial
young man greeting a new world. “The Dead Lake,” recounts the nuclear testing
conducting in the barren steppe of Kazakhstan, which still suffers the Soviet
nuclear tests which took place out there during the Cold War. This desolate
landscape riddled with abandoned silhouettes of buildings and unnatural lakes
formed by the tests, becomes the startling grim fairytale like story of “The
Dead Lake,” where a boy seeking to impress the girl he fancies, dives into one
of these nuclear lakes. What follows is all but expected. Despite not being read in Uzbekistan, and
living his professional writing life in exile, Hamid Ismailov remains one of
the most important post-Soviet writers heralding from the Central Asian states,
whose work is not just politically important, culturally significant, but
maintains literary significance.
Shahrnush Parsipur – Iran – When Jila Mossaed was elected to the Swedish Academy, the
academy was provided a member to its council who could read and provide insight
into the Persian language and literature. Just as the late Göran Malmqvist was
the Swedish Academy’s sinologist, and whose perspective and opinion on Chinese
culture, language, and literature would have been highly respected and sought
after, it is reasonable to believe that Jila Mossaed’s opinion and insights
will be welcomed by the Swedish Academy, especially as it seeks to broaden its
understanding and approach to languages and literatures that have been
overlooked. As a member of the Swedish Academy, Mossaed, has the privilege to
nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and it would be
reasonable to presume that she will nominate writers from her native language
and culture, who she respects and admires. As Iranian and Persian language
literature has shown over the past century, women writers are often the most
outspoken, formidable, and ferocious, such as the late poet: Simin Behbahani,
the Lioness of Iranian Literature, who challenged the social and political
status quo of Iran, and Shahrnush Parsipur is no different. Parsipur, takes an
equal adversarial approach to literature, to inspire social and political
changes in perspective and decorum of Iranian society. Shahrnush Parsipur’s
literary work explores the divide of women in Iranian society, and the
conditions that they are subjected to. Her characters continually express
openly their disregard for their place in society; they unabashedly sexual
oppression, domination; ridicule the virtues of chastity; and resist the social
and political demands of society against them. Her writings have not come
without controversy. Twice she was imprisoned for her novel “Women Without
Men.” Her prison memoirs were published to great acclaim and received
international translation and recognition following, allowing the writer to
move into exile, where she has stayed, while remaining an active vocal critic
of the patriarchal social restraints of her homeland. Shahrnush Parsipur, is by
all accounts one of those forceful hurricane forces of literature that demands
social, political, and ideological changes.
Europe—
Ivan
Klima – Czechia – Czech literature over the past decades has been dominated by
Milan Kundera and his ostensible disgust with his former homeland. When one did
not pay attention the warring factions of Kundera and Czech sensibilities,
found relief in the romps of Bohumil Hrabal. Yet, quietly working away over the
years is Ivan Klima, a writer who has produced a combination of novels, essays,
plays, and testimonials of the 20th Century. His uneventful and
idyllic childhood was abruptly changed after Nazi Germany invaded the then
Czechoslovakia. Unbeknownst to Klima, both his parents had Jewish ancestry and
heritage, and though they were not practicing or observational Jews they were
considered equally as guilty by Nazi doctrine, and the Ivan and his family were
sent to the Terezín Concentration Camp. It was here that Ivan Klima learned of
the liberating abilities of language and writing, and the early inceptions of a
future as a writer took form. The formative years of the concentration camp
provided Klima numerous educational opportunities to observe and witness what
the absence of freedom looked like; how immediate and transient life is; how
violent and cruel the world can be; but also lessons in the art of survival
that otherwise almost brutalist animal instinct; and the flittering beauty of
escape that literature could provide. While incarcerated in Terezín Klima had only one novel to retreat to, Charles
Dickens “The Pickwick Papers,” and freedom became the act and art of
storytelling, that otherwise immersive experience. While in the concentration
camp, Ivan Klima performed puppet plays and daydreamed about his crushes, while
continually encapsulating his freedom within the frame of language and writing.
After Terezín was liberated Klima returned to Czechoslovakia with his family,
but further oppression awaited them with the Soviet authorities and communism. Always
in the shadow and absence of freedom, Klima’s work takes an ire stance of
skepticism to any concept that may be considered absolute in nature. Now 89
years old, one can’t help but wonder if Klima’s time had already passed for the
Nobel Prize for Literature; though there is no denying that the writer is
absolutely deserving of the award. His work is riddled with the salt and the
testimony of the lived and experienced, providing palpable perspective on the
atrocities of the 20th Century. Yet, one can’t help but wonder if
somehow the Swedish Academy sought to evade yet another ‘testimonial,’ writer
in the vein of: Imre Kertész, Herta Müller, and Svetlana Alexievich. Regardless
of the reasons which may prevent Klima from receiving the prize (age or testimonial
sphere of literary influence) Ivan Klima is one of the most renowned Czech
writers of the 20th Century and in the post-Soviet years.
Antonella
Anedda – Italy – There is something about poetry. A certain cryptic way in
which it chooses to waltz around the subject. As a form it orbits the centre
without making direct contact. It is a satellite that passes by the planet,
whistling whispery trails in its wake. Poetry requires patience and perhaps a
certain curiosity in other people’s secrets. While poets are stoic and
resilient, who enjoy the airs of mystery that leave readers to feign for clues
to understand their hermeticism. Needless to say, I am not a devout poetry
reader. I find other people dull, and any secret they contain is of little
intrigue or interest. Despite any personal prejudice directed towards the form
itself, one can recognize that poetry is by all accounts one of the oldest
literary forms crafted by human societies, and thus retains its sacred position
in the literary landscape. Yet, there are poets, who truly do rise above the
hermeticism and the self-indulgence, to provide incisive insights into the
human experience, without pomp or pretense. While there are others who do revel
in the history, the glory of the past, and seek to evoke that pageantry.
Antonella Anedda would perhaps be described as the latter of the two. Her
poetry carries a deep-seated understanding of language and tradition, paying
homage to the history of the Mediterranean literary form. There is an external
ethicist streak to Anedda’s poetry, a preoccupation with fate, death, tragedy,
the mortal coil, meditations on time and the crisis of the environment as it
influences the destiny of our world. In doing so, Antonella Anedda is one of
the most authoritarian poetic voices currently writing in contemporary Italian
poetry. She eschews narcissistic introspection in favour of observing with
detailed meditations on the external existential functions of the world, and in
doing so provides an almost pointillistic portrait of a world continually in
crisis, which are relieved in moments suspended in an atmosphere of joy,
beauty, and grace. The lack of introspection means that the personal character
of Antonella Anedda is neglected in her poetic works. The poet’s self is
sacrificed or redacted from the literary text. There is no lingering
fingerprint or shadow of a persona or ego. In lieu there is only observation
and reportage, providing poetic dissertations, meditations, and discussions.
Durs
Grünbein – Germany – Few writers are referred to as having herald from the
former “East Germany,’ – and if they are, it is commonly a mere footnote in
their biography. For Durs Grünbein, East Germany, was the incubator for his
poetic upbringing, preoccupation, and literary treatise. Born in 1962, the poet
grew up in the former communist state, and under the totalitarian regime, which
provided him great influence in his early political, social, and literary
influence; by the time he had begun to publish, the state was already in deep
decay. Despite being an East German poet, it was unification that brought Durs Grünbein his immediate poetic and literary achievement,
providing him the environment to envision and participate in a new complete
Germany. A reunited Germany. Grünbein was not overwhelmed by the immediacy of
the changing times and events, but rather one who changed with the times and
adapted to the opportunities now on offer. Since his initial debut in the late
eighties, Durs Grünbein was noted for being of the most invigorated, and
powerful new voices in the German literary scene, especially in the field of
poetry. His poetry marked a changing wind in German language poetry, one that
breathed new life of a complete German whole, rather than the segregated camps
of frail and crumbing concrete. Durs Grünbein’s poetry is noted for going
beyond the autobiographical and personal, and instead turns it eyes towards
more stately, historical and external aesthetics. He tries on different styles
and forms like suits, while giving respect to the classics, though never
impeded or constrained by their dogmatic principles. Grünbein’s early poetry
was noted for its deadpan expressions, ironic perceptions, and bitter sarcasm.
Over time these earlier themes were replaced by classical styles, complete with
austere restraints, which then once again abandoned for a measured and aged
version of his earlier work, now fermented into a tonic of playful severity,
and abstaining from the sarcasm and cynicism beforehand. Beyond poetry, Durs
Grünbein is an accomplished essayist, whose subjects and themes range as
electrically as his poetry; though they blend memoir or autobiography, with
further concerns with politics, history, aesthetics, science, medicine, ethics,
or antiquity.
Annie
Ernaux - France - As a writer, Annie Ernaux, is by all accounts a
multi-disciplined social scientist. Though her work is often denoted and
classified as memoirs or autofiction - genres that recall intensely personal exposé
of oneself, to the point of being crude exhibitionism and sexual fetishization
(here's looking at you Christine Angot). No, Annie Ernauxs exhumation of the
self, though superficially very personal and intimate in nature, does not
narrowly function as some ill-advised gossip column or tell-all reveal. No,
there is no Plath like confessional strip tease, which conducts itself with the
slow anticipation of self-mutilation as the artistic process of some
unadvisable healing process. While most memoirists, diarists, autobiographers and
company, participate in the self-indulgence of narcissistic wallowing and
lounging in the realm of the intrapersonal; Annie Ernaux remains consistently
concerned with the intrapersonal as it relates and interacts with the interpersonal.
The self as it reflects, interacts, confirms, and resists society and its
expectations, demands, and oppressive tendencies are observed through the
sharp, personal, and subjective lens of Annie Ernaux. Her work traces the
intimate and personally experienced lives of the individual as they maneuver
through fluctuating social changes, evolutions, revolutions, vogue ideologies,
philosophies, attitudes, and developing technologies. The groundbreaking,
everlasting, and historical, becomes encapsulated in palpable and lived
preoccupations. Riots which threaten to derail a grocery trip; an abortion that
finally forces ourselves to confront the puriticannical indifference
conservative beliefs have and deny any attempts at progress and future
development of the possible human condition; or rampant consumerism never a
byproduct of chauvinistic capitalism itself, but of the very human nature
demand for materialistic comforts and convenience, and capitalisms ability to
force feed consumerist perspectives on the individual, in order to fuel the
ephemeral machine of economics. Through it all, Annie Ernaux observes,
recounts, records, transcribes, and remembers the changes in the air, the
different theories regarded to conceptualize and understand the human being as a
social animal. The self as the anchor and vantage point to provide narrative
decree and understanding makes Annie Ernaux a welcomed writer, one who provides
real time commentary on the human condition, without wringing it out in the
realms of dray academia, which eventually leads to the myth making of these
historical events, which gloss over or neglect the mundane, the trivial, the
ordinary business of daily life; Ernaux also presents an often contrary
perspective, which vocalize the disappoints, lost hopes, and tarnished
ideologies of the movements that promised such great possibilities. Ernaux's
unflinching perspective, provides a qualitative study of society, history, and
the individual.
Gyrðir
Elíasson – Iceland – Iceland is renowned for its literary heritage rooted in
its ancient literary sagas. Tales of heroism, mythology, romanticism of the
Viking era, and folk all wrapped up in historical epicism. These ancient
cornerstones of heritage are perhaps recognized in the sheer epic and daunting
weight of Halldór Laxness, whose modernist novels carry a special homage and
recognition to the sagas and epics of the past and maintain this heritage in
regard to the modern novel. On the contrary Gyrðir Elíasson is not an epicist
in either the scale of his work or the scope of it. Elíasson is a poet first
and foremost, with his initial debut and his favoured form, though he is most
well-known and recognized for his prose, specifically his short stories. The
stories of Elíasson use precise language with an economy of words to achieve
macro impact. Despite his work being condescended and physically smaller in
comparison to other contemporary ‘door stop,’ novels, Elíasson’s work is not
myopic in its scope, instead in its essential and ethereal in form Elíasson
provides a meaningful and poetic statement regarding the human condition,
leaving much of his work existing within a fine balance between what is written
and the negative space. As a writer, Gyrðir Elíasson made his debut in 1983
with the poetry collect: “Read and Black Suspenders,” and in 1987 he made his
prose debut with: “The Walking Squirrel.” Elíasson’s poetic leanings and debut
are perhaps what makes his work linguistically and lyrically dexterous. His
ability to maximize minimal with the greatest reward, showcases his early
poetry, as well as the beautiful yet simple language of his prose. His novels
are known for depicting the mundane invaded by an ethereal dream world, where
the characters and narrators are haunted or left confused by the surreal,
supernatural or dream like logic which has overtaken their life for the
briefest of moments. Despite this, Elíasson rejects the
literary categorization of magical realism, referring to the title as a garden
variety over used term. In Elíasson’s more mature work, his stories have almost
abandoned the earlier blend of dream and reality, and now almost appear as
motional stories dealing with mundane concepts, but only on the surface, as
below lies an undercurrent of psychological nuanced probing and existential
pondering. With his acrobatic and poetic use of language, and his ability to
condense his narratives to miniature ethereal elements, it is no surprise that Gyrðir
Elíasson is regarded as a grand stylist of contemporary Icelandic literature as
well as a short story maser. Ten years ago in 2011, Elíasson received the
Nordic Councils Literature Prize for his short story collection: “Milli trjánna,”
(“Between the Trees,”). Though not a grand epicist in scope, Gyrðir Elíasson’s
work utilizes extensive negative space and poetic forms to insinuate glacial
depth that are not readily codified within the narratives.
Sirkka
Turkka – Finland – Sirkka Turkka is a renowned Finish poet. Sirkka Turkka’s
poetry pays attention towards nature and animals. Themes of nature and animals
is a common theme within Finnish literature, both contemporary and late. These
writers write about the respect and beauty of the natural landscape of their
nation; and give praise to their animal neighbours, companions, and fierce
predators. Sirkka Turkka’s poetry is noted for its explicit warm treatment and
fondness of animals—loyal, trusting, and selfless companions, whose instincts
are never muddled by the emotional irrationality of human beings. Their
thoughts may be simple, but they do have their philosophical ponderings, their
witticism, and their own idiosyncrasies. Their flaws are always forgivable. As
a poet, Sirkka Turkka serenades these companions with a gentle touch, a caring
eye, and an unyielding spirit that is singular in its compassionate treatment.
Turkka began being published as a poet at the age of thirty-four, which some
may consider a late age for a writer to begin embarking on a literary career. Regardless
the maturity of her already developed themes, piercing predilections, gentle
lyricism, praise of the natural world, and poetic voice were immediately
praised. The poetry of Sirkka Turkka is noted for carrying the heart of the
storyteller, employing simple language Turkka can digress and recount the
stories she tells through poetry. Sirkka Turkka is by no means an erudite
orator, pontificating from the grand marble stages or balconies of the pompous
poetic past. Instead Sirkka Turkka’s poetry is warm, intimate, and inviting; reminiscent
of previous Nobel Laureate: Wisława Szymborska; and the crystalline reflections
of Nobel Laureate: Tomas Tranströmer. The deceptive simplicity of Sirkka
Turkka’s poetry is its most endearing quality, as it tackles often powerful
questions regarding life, meaning, memory, aging, nature and death. Sirkka
Turkka won the biennial Tranströmer Prize in 2016, and as it stands, she is the
only Finnish author the receive the award. Previous winners include the Danish
poet, Inger Christensen, German poet Durs Grünbein, Polish poet Adam Zagajewski
and American Poet Louise Glück. The most recent winner of the Tranströmer Prize
is, the American poet, Louise Glück. Over the past few years however, Sirkka
Turkka has fallen into ill health. It is not clear how this health digressions
will impact her chances of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet, with Tua
Forsström also sitting on the Swedish Academy, there is hope that she can
advocate and provide insight into Finnish literature, and the poetry of Sirkka
Turkka.
Guy
Goffette – Belgium – A contemporary overview of French poetry has reduced the
canon to self-reflective, experimental, absorbed in its own conviction regarding
its self-importance, Guy Goffette is a breath of renewed fresh air and spirit,
whose poetry neglects the conceded formal experimentation that has become all
the fashion. In lieu of poetry that dances within its own hermeticism, isolated
within claustrophobic caves that echo within such subterranean chambers the
appointed convictions of its own genius, Guy Goffette is unabashedly lyrical,
where they pay homage to both the late Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, who Goffette
is often warmly compared to. Much like his forebearers, Guy Goffette rejects
the deconstructive theories used to reconstruct the forms and ideas of poetry
in favour of more refined and lyrically intense poems that hark back to the
Symbolist and Decadent poets, whose lush lyricism became the hallmark of
opulence and literary style, before the clinical and bleached postmodern
perspectives begun to take hold. Though little has been translated into
English, Guy Goffette has been described as one of the most important French
language poets currently at work in the contemporary era. One of his few
translations into the English language, “Charlestown Blues,” provides a brief
overview of his poetic work, with engrossing lyricism, and metaphorical
preoccupations that mercurially change in their perspective and scope when
reviewed or observed from another or new vantage point. Guy Goffette is a poet
that brings forth and heralds back to the grand and great literary and poetic traditions
of the past, the ones we have since shed and disregarded as outdated,
antiquated, or pompous in their scope and pretense. In doing so, however, Goffette
is able to showcase how rich and succulent these forms are within an area
lacking in such colour, opulence, and metaphorical life. Guy Goffette truly
remarks and beckons forth an old age era of poetry stepped in the richness of
decadence; but Goffette’s poetry is not scholarly or dry in its rendition but
transformed and vitalized with the admiration of the contemporary age regarding
the old masters.
Ana Blandiana - Romania
- Mircea Cartarescu is one of those writers (like Jon Fosse) where readers and
critics will debate which format is his native form. In the case of Cartarescu,
it often comes down to the debate of whether he is a poet first and a novelist
second, or a novelist first and a poet second. In the case of Ana Blandiana, no
such debate exists, as Blandiana is considered one of the foremost most
important poets of contemporary Romanian literature, and along with Mircea
Cartarescu is rumoured to be a future Nobel Laureate (and is a contender every
year she is overlooked). As a poet Ana Blandiana is famous for her dissidence
against the former Soviet sympathetic regime of Ceausescu and his ironclad
incompetence were hallmarks of his authoritarian rule. In spite of this,
the dictator did amass and institute a propaganda personality cult to propagate
around him to bolster his ego, which was as characterless as a bruised
peach. Ana Blandiana gained a fierce reputation as a poet whose
lyricism rebuked the hot stinking dog breath of a dictator who watched his
people like a rabid sheep dog preparing to slaughter the flock. Her poetry
retained a firm moralistic and ethical stance against tyranny, corruption, and
the bloated egoism that had since racked ruin across Romania. The defiant tones
of her poetry, the beautiful imagery that startled and invoked, were admired,
and adored by the Romanian reading population. Of course, this in itself had
consequences. Censorship and harassment were common actions of recourse, which
did little to intimidate Ana Blandiana, and instead strengthened her resolve to
continue her poetic protest. After the fall of communism,
Blandiana maintained her poetic output. Her work now sought to reconcile
and console a battered and beaten country. It takes stock of a collective
history and seeks to remedy it - if at the very minimal soothe it - and inspire
a new destiny, to reconcile with the past as tragedies, but etch out and create
a new future that is their own, without the influence of neighbours or other
dictating puppets instituted by other regimes. Further collections of her
poetry continue to provide a marvel of her postmodern perspectives but showcase
the poet now longer as militant as she was in her early years. Replacing the
firebrand anger is a poet who meditates on the evanescence of being being,
the effervescence and disintegration of the spirit and soul when faced
with time, and the human races 'progress,' are also its greatest degeneration
into less critical thinking, whereby exemplifying that unimaginative
sheepishness that reduces the populace to further torment and suffering. The
images can be surreal as they are affectingly relevant: angels lost and
disenfranchised, unable to return to heaven; gods who chase kids on scooters to
regain relevancy in their oblivious attitudes; a renewed language which
recreates the country, which is burned, scarred, and battered. Ana
Blandiana maintains the poetic sensibilities of what poetry does best: ruminate
on the refined and provide further reflection for the reader to
consider. Blandiana's reputation as being one of the foremost important
and revolutionary poets of Romania is not just a bias national declaration, it
is confirmed with international respect and recognition.
Olvido
García Valdé - Spain – The Spanish language laureates of the Nobel Prize for
Literature fluctuates between Europe and South America. Despite a shared
language, the two maintain a distinct difference in cultural perspective and
linguistic ingenuity. Where the former colonies of South and Central America carved
out their literary legacy and distinctive style with magical realism;
continental Spanish language literature had dabbled in many forms, fashions,
and styles through its century long existence; from classicism, romanticism,
symbolism, modernism, surrealism, and postmodernism, it casually slipped into
each style and form with grace and flair, though always keen to give another
one a whirl. Olvido García Valdé is a poet who maintains that progressive
perspective in continually moving forward, trying on new forms, blending styles,
and acquainting oneself with new literary perspectives. Valdé’s poetry is an
intense unity of contrasting and paradoxical forms to create a pastiche collage
of opposites and contrary perspectives. Valdé’s poetry collection “And We’re
Alive,” is her debut in the English language, and was an awarding collection in
Spanish literary circles, winning Spain’s National Poetry Prize. The collection
is fragmented and fluid in its composition. The poems range in different forms
and spectrums, from complex verses and prose poems, to spit fire fragments and
aphorisms. Throughout it all, Olvido García Valdé showcase that language is not
static, existing within a suspended stasis, but a progressing, shifting, and
breathing concept. For Valdé language is a naturally evolving concept,
continuing to take mercurial shape as the individual grows, ages, and matures
through their life, bring a change in perspective, and sheds any misconception
that language exists within a predetermined or fatalistic nature. Olvido García
Valdé has also become the most recent winner of the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American
Poetry Prize. As a poet, Olvido García Valdé is well regarded for her
paradoxical form, attention to linguistic detail and nuance, quotidian
commentary, and existential reflections. The judges of the Pablo Neruda
Ibero-American Poetry Prize praised Valdé’s poetry building continued bridges
between both the Spanish peninsula and South and Central America.
Jon
Fosse – Norway – Before retiring from writing for the theatre to focus on prose
writing, Jon Fosse was (and is) one of the most produced and performed living
playwright in the world. As a dramatist, Jon Fosse had written over twenty
plays, and been hailed as the heir of Henrik Ibsen; but also, Samuel Beckett,
and to a minor extent, Harold Pinter. Despite the comparisons and the review of
dramatic heritage, Jon Fosse writes in contrary to the other three. Fosse is
not a naturalist in the fashion of Ibsen. His work is not a detailed portrait
of the individual, as they maneuver through their day to day lives, fit with
their own tribulations and predications; thwarted dreams and aspirations, which
empathetically connect them to the audience, who sit just beyond the stages
end. Nor is Fosse an absurdist, writing in the shadow of Beckett’s mantel. His
characters are not veiled modernist clowns, performing postmodern pantomime
routines mocking the absurd cruelty of life as it circles the meaninglessness
as its sole trajectory. Fosse also lacks the comedic menace of Pinter, as well
as explicit foray into political discourse. Fosse is his own writer, one of
subtle complexities. His work is noted for its minimalist structure and
perspective (recalling both Beckett and Pinter) but lacks the absurd and
underlying menacing nuances of the two. Fosse’s plays are not realist in
tradition either; rather they take place in strange and hallucinogenic worlds,
where time and reality are shifting concepts, and of little concern to the
characters interaction with each other, as they themselves exchange with each
other on more spiritual and emotional levels. Longing and lacking for an ideal
of which they cannot quite articulate coherently. Fosse’s dialogue is noted for
its simple but poetic structure, filled with long pauses and permeating
silence. Jon Fosse’s prose follows the same structure as his plays. His novels
are noted for their long-winded sentences and sparse dialogue. Honest
communication between characters is never possible. They speak to each other in
clipped fragments, as if they are only partially concerned with the conversation,
and more engaged with another thought or idea, unrelated to the immediate. Past
the minimalist prose, the sparse dialogue, the thinly conceived characters, and
otherwise fishbone thick plots; is the eerie sense of theological metaphor and
mysticism, as if the deprived and grey world calls out for divine intervention,
which never comes. Recent prose publications such as his “Trilogy,”
(‘Wakefulness,” “Olav’s Dream,” and “Weariness,”) recounts the tale of the Alse
and Alida, who carry a biblical allegory of predestined doom and undying love,
recalls a stark retelling of Mary and Joseph, and the unborn Christ. Jon Fosse
is a remarkable first-class literary writer. Fosse’s prose is salt and peppered
with repetition, images, dialogue, and metaphor that creates a lapsing tide,
which rhythmically pulls the reader under, lulling them into exploring the
existential uncertainty of the characters. Readers of Jon Fosse’s work will
note that they do not read or view his work for their plots or their narratives;
but rather to be taken in by the eb and flow of the rhythmic linguistic
experience.
Olga
Sedakova – Russia – Being referred to as “Confessional Christian Poet,” may be
viewed as a hinderance, or being perceived in a negative fashion. It’s an image
that carries the pious halo, whose concern is self-righteous pontificating
decrees, rather than the meaningful, complex, and often ironic poetic
observations of the human condition. The very same human condition that is
denied the doting hand of any celestial or holy being. In this denial the world
spins through its circular wheel of absurdity and dread, with occasional
intermissions of relief. Despite being called a “Confessional Christian Poet,” Olga
Sedakova is not pious or theologically concerned; nor she is a wailing mad
lunatic, confessing and airing her private details and personal predilections
to the reading public like a catholic confessional. Rather, Sedakova is a
pinnacle of astute moral integrity, one based around the most instinctual
Christian beliefs and ideals, which is not always apparent in churches—this is
most exemplified when Sedakova criticized the Russian Orthodox Church’s
intolerance towards other Christian faiths. While on the flipside she exchanged
poetic correspondence with the late Pope John Paul II. Olga Sedakova’s poetry
is noted for its neoclassical forms, and highly theological perspective with
regards to faith and the human condition, and the striving goal to reach the
divine ideal. Though these poetic preoccupations have gathered her praise and
acclaim; during the Soviet Era, her poems were deemed unsuitable and censored
or barred from publication, meaning Sedakova was forced to participate in the
Samizdat Movement of underground Soviet Literary scenes; but it was not until
after the fall and collapse of the Red Empire, did Olga Sedakova finally gain
greater recognition and circulation amongst readers and critics, both home and
abroad. Olga Sedakova’s poetry is stark, parred down, and yet carry the
economic values of earnest expression. Her poetry not only recounts or
documents the human experience, but also the goal to achieve the ideal as
theorized in the theological concepts of the divine. Olga Sedakova is both a
poet of reality, but also of the progressive possibility; the spirit, yearning
and in pursuit of the superlative.
Drajo
Jančar – Slovenia – One of Slovenia’s prominent contemporary writers, Drajo
Jančar is one of Eastern Europe’s postmodern masters. Heralding from what was
once the Soviet multicultural mosaic Yugoslavia, which had since fractured and
become fragmented into sovereign states (Jančar now resides in Slovenia).
Influenced and inspired by the early modernist traditions, , Drajo Jančar’s
work traces the individuals struggle against oppressive institutions: prisons,
psychiatric hospitals, military barracks, galleys or ships; or an oppressive
society in the form of a dictatorship or totalitarian regime. These otherwise gravitas
themes are metered and offset with an ironic touch and laconic humour,
employing tragicomic events to cut the tension of the narratives, and propel
the narrative along. In “Mocking Desire,” for example Drajo Jančar recounts the
narrative of Gregor Gradnik who explores the sensual and seething world of New
Orleans. Though only in the ‘Big Easy,’ to teach creative writing at a
university, what follows is an acute and ironic conversation regarding the
cultures of Slovenia and New Orleans, though attempting to remain an impartial
objective observer, Gregor Gradnik become entangled into a series of bizarre
relationships, social interactions, both erotic and professional. The result
ensures an ironic dry recount of New Orleans, reflecting on the nature in which
Gregor Gradnik views the world and his place within it. Beyond his literary
career, Drajo Jančar is a public intellectual, writing weekly news paper
columns, participating in interviews, and facilitating lectures and speeches,
and has engaged in polemic discussions and conversations with Peter Handke
regarding the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
Henrik
Nordbrandt – Denmark – The poetry of Henrik Nordbrandt was described to me by Bror
Axel Dehn as a marriage between classical lyrical traditions with a childlike
perspective. For years, Inger Christensen was considered a serious contender
for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Christensen was a marvel of Danish poetry,
whose themes were universal in scope and perspective: death, love, fear, powerlessness,
and their impact on the human condition, which she mulled over in her unique
and individualistic in nature. Yet via time and waiting, Inger Christensen
passed without winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, in turn Henrik
Nordbrandt is considered the best candidate of the Danish language for the
Nobel Prize for Literature. Nordbrandt’s poetry pays homage to the notion of
traveling and transit, as the poet has spent much of his poetic career traveling
and has resided in the Mediterranean for much of his adult life and has gone so
far as to publish a Turkish cookbook. The concept of travel is a shifting
perspective and theme which moves from arrivals to departures, absence, and
emptiness, company, and companionship, and of course life and death. Travel and
transit is not just a realm of the physical preoccupation either, as transit
and crossings can take place within the psychological world, unconscious
realms, and the metaphysical landscape. The language of Henrik Nordbrandt is
equally as playful, fluid, and paradoxical in his poetry, often using contrary
images to reflect on the often competing and contrary image of the human
condition and experience. Despite the playful use of language, and the ever
clear and almost childlike enjoyment of perspective, beneath the surface, there
is an undercurrent of seriousness and melancholy as it provides commentary on
the human condition.
Lyudmila
Petrushevskaya – Russia – The fairytale is a timeless genre. They are stories
and fables that have become immemorial and timeless. They are pulled from the
antic, from trunks, and forgotten drawers and chests, whereby they are
inherited by a new generation of new listeners and readers. The stories of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya carry
the atmosphere of fairytales. They are dark pearls strung along on an onyx
chain. Each one a glistening, gleaming, inky tear of unfortunate events, and
circumstances that depict desperate individuals in despairing situations.
During the Soviet Era, Petrushevskaya was censored and prohibited from
publishing her stories and novels. Her works were and are not political in
nature. They do not encourage revolt or rebellion, promote any predilection
towards political machinations or maneuvering. Rather, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
was proscribed from publishing due to her work ‘blackening reality.’ In other
words, her short stories and novels did not adhere or prescribe to the
socialist realism and propaganda requirements of the Soviet System. Instead Petrushevskaya
did the complete opposite: she described the reality of Soviet life with
fairytale acuity: unhappy marriages, childhood poverty, disparity in wealth,
and inhumane living conditions. There was no praise and no ideological
fanaticism or Soviet sycophancy. There were no proletariat ideal worker toiling
away for the greater good, though there were worker toiling (then drinking),
but it was to make the minimal wage, which allotted them the funds to purchase
the scraps and brad rationed out with bureaucratic stinginess. The inspiration
for the narratives of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya come from the Russian people
themselves, especially the women, who are keener and more interested in talking
about life, gossiping about their neighbors, and venting their frustrations.
These women become the modern Soviet Homers, who ride the subway or the buses,
sit in cafes, and on park benches. From them, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya concocts
a witch’s brew, and present their narratives in her finely shaped, dark pearls
of fairytales. Now days, Petrushevskaya has become a somewhat Saintly figure—or
Minerva—to the Russian women, who view her as a medium, who has given material
form, and voice to the marital discord of the Soviet Union to uncomfortable
democracy, which is a reflection of their own broken marriages and divorces.
All the while Lyudmila Petrushevskaya never digresses to political commentary.
Though her popularity may still be on the rise, her apolitical position is
still able to ruffle feathers, with her frank stories, novels and plays, where
she discusses, depicts, and contemplates the absurd and often tragic realities
of the former Soviet Union and how it has spilled over into the new Russia. Throughout
each of her narratives, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya does not just merely describe
or objectively listen the rotating stories of the Russian people, their
recollections of disillusioned futures, disgruntled marriages, and disgraceful
jobs. The solace that Petrushevskaya offers is coated in the black licorice
glaze of biting irony.
Botho
Strauß – Germany – Playwrights are a unique breed within the literary world.
They are more tangible and materialistic then the novelist or the poet, though
in the same vein as the poet rely heavily on the abilities and limitations of language
and must further contest with the limitations of the moving parts of their
work, such as the stage and actors. On the other hand, playwrights enjoy the
ability to have their work become more concrete, more immediate, and visually
viewed for their readers and their viewers. Despite this, playwrights are a
rare breed among the Nobel Prize for Literature, they’re oeuvre is also
supplemented with poetry, or novels as in the case of Samuel Beckett and Peter
Handke; while others such as Elfriede Jelinek are renowned and recognized for
their plays and works for theatre, as their use of linguistic gymnastics and
ingenuity is more aptly observed within the world of the stage. Then there are
others such as Jon Fosse who have made their name within the literary world for
their work on stage, but whose main literary pursuit has always been the novel.
Botho Strauß is a playwright who falls into the same category as Samuel Beckett
and Peter Handke, his pursuit has been working in the theatre, but his literary
work is supplemented with novels and essays. Botho Strauß’s literary work
concerns the alienation of the individual lost in the anonymity and desolation
of the modern world. Out there adrift and aimless, the contemporary man is
disenfranchised and disposed from the reality of real human connection and
belonging and is reduced to a state of discontent. This is aptly observed in
his most well-known play: “The Young Man,” which displays a young man alienated
and adrift in the modern world, whose encounters are riddled without any serious
connection and are ruminated on by the character who seeks to understand their
place within the social world, while finding a place without it. This urban
disenfranchisement and displacement of the individual lost within the
cacophonous concrete encased society appear to be the preoccupations of Botho
Strauß, who has gained a warm reception in the English language (warmer than
his initial debut), where the bleakness of his play “Big and Small,” was
lukewarmly applauded as it critically assed the overt materialism and
consumerist perspective of the day with an eye for the pessimistically absurd. Botho
Strauß is considered one of the most foremost dramatists and playwrights of
contemporary German literature; much like Peter Handke and Elfirede Jelinek, just
less controversial.
Fleur
Jaeggy – Switzerland (Italian language) – Fleur Jaeggy is the literary queen of
dry-ice. Her pen becomes a stainless-steel scalpel etching and dissecting her
characters and society at large, through continued minute observations,
revealing at its core a failed system rotting in its own nihilistic debauchery.
Everyday life in Jaeggy’s world is but a thin layer of ice waiting to give way,
where beneath the cold translucent sheet of frost lies the misery, the
drudgery, the mundane tragedies, and the ever-present violence and insanity of
the human psyche. It is in this cold and uninhabitable place, one completely
deprived of joy, does Fleur Jaeggy sketch her shadowy characters. These
characters live squandered and unfortunate existences—that is if one can call
their perilous predilections living at all. They exist only to drift through
the sewage strewn river of their life, until the reprieve of death. Their
perspective on the matter is the same as their author: dry, cold, and precise.
They act with restrained emotion, presenting the world with a rational
demeanor, all the while they are consumed in the violet flames of their psyche,
prone to fits of rage and passion, all the while never slipping into such
pantomime. Instead, they calculate their outburst with measured approaches,
such as concealing their suicide, by ensuring the gun shot corresponds with the
ringing of the church bell. Their violent appetites are sated when they watch
manor houses burn for the sheer hell of it. They maintain one aspiration early
on: they want to die. One could never call Fleur Jaeggy idealistic. In lieu she
depicts the world with frigid naturalistic expression. The biographical
elements of Fleur Jaeggy are scarce. She was born in Switzerland, though her
literary language is Italian (with her home now Italy)—though her literary
works call back to the mountains and dark valleys of Switzerland. She is noted
for solitary and reclusive nature, rarely consenting to interviews and evading
questions during them. Beyond her literary preoccupations, she is also a
translator of Thomas De Quincy and Marcel Schwob. Jaeggy’s literary style is a
marriage of different forms. Her novels are known to possess qualities of an
essay, and to have a language likened to a prose poem. Her short stories are
often given similar recognition with regards to its blend of poetic language,
essayist analysis and prose narrative. Despite being overlooked, and grossly
underappreciated, Fleur Jaeggy is an astonishing and monumental writer. Her
work is biting and perhaps mistakenly nihilistic, but her observations and
dry-icy cartographical analysis of the depravity of existence is both endearing
and admirable, as it refuses to look at the world through priggish moral high
handing. It’s an existential vivisection of the depravity to seek universal
meaning, only to be driven mad or violent by the inherent meaninglessness.
Şükrü
Erbaş – Turkey – Şükrü Erbaş is one of Turkey’s most beloved, celebrated, and
best-selling poets. His complete literary oeuvre spans over twenty collections
of poems and essays. The poetic inclinations of Şükrü Erbaş initially concerned
human relationships, seen through the lens, and the details of the overlooked,
and ignored aspects of everyday life. These inclinations fermented and matured
overtime to take in broader subjects of society, individuals, and their
relationship to nature, maintaining the eye for the overlooked details, and
mistakenly overlooked portrait, and rebuttal against the mistaken emotionless magnanimity
of the natural worlds grandeur, compared to the progressive urban landscape;
the former of the two always eternal, and timeless. Şükrü Erbaş’s poetic
language is noted for its simplicity, in order to fend off preconceived
prejudices that uninitiated readers may have towards the poetic form, with its
concern for hermetic preoccupations, emotional resonance, and omission of
narrative structure. The use of lucid language will ensure readers are never
met with an air of pomp and pretense, whereby they can read the poems with the
intention of understanding, appreciation, and contemplation. The use of
everyday metaphors allows Şükrü Erbaş to bridge the poetic world and the real
world, with an imbued sense of symbiosis. This lucid and simple language has,
endeared himself to the reading public of Turkey, and allowed his poems to
touch all members of society, who approach his work with casual curiosity; and
when they have closed the clovers of his volumes, are gifted with a unique
poetic vision that at no point in time, pontificated from the ivory tower of
academia; but presented rather a natural soothing language, which could be
found at a park bench, café, or down the street.
Doris
Kareva – Estonia – The poet as the pearl conceived within the soul and spirt of
the emotional vortex that is the human experience is best described as Doris
Kareva. The poetry of Kareva is riddled with the emotional brilliance and
resonance. The sole goal of the poetry of Doris Kareva is ot be felt and
understood through emotive sensations and sensory tuning. Known for diving and
plummeting to the deepest aspects of the emotional experience, soul, and human
experience, Doris Kareva dredges up the fine sands of the human heart, soul,
spirit, and shadow. Kareva’s poems are acclaimed and recognized for observing a
strict adherence to personal form, one based on brevity and a mercurial
shifting notion of clarity, which is striking as poetry is a form condensed and
refined to the immediate and implied. Furthermore, Kareva’s poetry is regarded
as having a paradoxical movement, by employing both vivid imagery, clear
diction, while an otherwise ambiguous or shifting meaning, which relies on the
emotional responses of the readers to imbued, inflect, or guide any semblance
of meaning. Despite the varied interpretations for her poetry is open to and
willing to be red by all those who open its clime like shell in order to gaze
and the wonder inside. The poems of Doris Kareva are not historical chronicles,
or epic in scope or vision, which often means they’re misclassified as feminine
in nature o pertaining to the sensibilities of femininity, which can be
interpreted as ‘less then,’ in scope and perspective. This is an otherwise
chauvinistic and absurdist sensibility, where one views literature on the
dichotomous scale of gender, where a male poets concern themselves with the
preoccupations of history, human destiny and philosophical ruminations; while
female poets are only capable of producing romantic lyricism, or poetry about
family life, and domesticity. Doris Kareva may not be concerned with the
epicist perspective of historical recounts and legendary myth making, but her
exploration of the emotional context, human destiny, and mercurial workings of
the soul, is the highest quality poetry on a global literary stage. When
reviewing Doris Kareva’s poetry they will find a pearl as stunning, ethereal,
and elusive as the dawn, in which the sun has yet to slip above the horizon; it
is there her poems glimmer with boundless meanings and interpretations, each
depending on the personal characteristics of the beholder. Doris Kareva’s
poetry is anything but anemic. It vibrates with the emotional intensity of life
lived, contemplated, and bruised. Kareva’s poetry has received appreciation and
acknowledgement in the English language as well. A recent translation of her
poetry: “Days of Grace,” has been well received by critics and readers a like,
who admire Doris Kareva’s multifaceted meaning through emotional lens, harmonic
grace, economic clarity, and expanding thought throughout out the collection.
Pierre
Michon – France – Pierre Michon is one of those quiet writers of French
Literature. He does not capture the controversy of Michel Houellebecq or Virginie
Despentes; he does not exhume the private, personal, or sensitive like
Christine Angot and turn into some tabloid literary feature; he doesn’t quite
have the obsessive brooding preoccupations of Patrick Modiano; or the expansive
explorative eye as J.M.G Le Clezio. Rather, Pierre Michon, quietly sits back
and writes otherwise strange or obscure novels that never make a headline; but
gain cult notoriety amongst his readers. His prose is both dense as it is
intense, despite his work generally being relatively short in comparison to
other notorious dense writers such as: Laszlo Krasznahorkai or Peter Nadas. Any
sensation of discouragement or weariness felt towards his work should be
dissuaded. Michon is not necessarily a poetic babbling blowhard, challenging
but not without reward. Though his work carries poetic symphonic qualities, it
is not necessarily pontificating pretense, which seeks to alienate the reader.
Patience is still required, as Pierre Michon is barely interested in
narratives, story arches, or plot. Instead, his work carries the concern for
the subject itself—be it lost and forgotten saints, abbots, and monks; or the
strange workings of the heart, portrayed amongst the background and context of
Paleolithic cave art, echoing through time. Michon is not a warm writer either.
His work carries a cold clinician’s eye, with a voice echoing through the
marble amphitheatre, into the obsidian catacombs below. Pierre Michon’s work
carries little regarding empathy, but an increasingly obsessive attitude
towards his immediate subject, be it tangible or cerebral; memory driven, or
fictious. Despite the otherwise contrary nature of the author and his work, it
has not halted or reduced his career, as he has been granted with numerous
literary prizes including the Franz Kafka Prize in two-thousand and nineteen,
which only shows his growing appeal and recognition on a international stage.
Pierre Michon has always maintained one preccoupation with his literary work:
the preoccupation of the microcosmic in relation to macro elements and
events.
Magdalena
Tulli – Poland – The literary family tree of Magdalena Tulli houses the apples
of: Bruno Schulz, Daniil Kharms, Franz Kafka, and Jorge Luis Borges. The roots
firmly anchor this tree deep into the earth. The apples are often warped,
surreal, and carry the tinge of cynical bitterness, riddled with the absurd,
and at times the surreal. When one drops and begins the slow process of decay,
one can spy in its fermenting juices and rotting peels, a world ending. A city
of steel, brick, and glass collapses. The sky once distant now encases in
closure. The sidewalks crack; while the roads warp. The seeds remain as postmodern
jewels, offering inclinations of the fragmented realities, narratives, and
stories beneath the last material, which has yet to decay. The world of
Magdalena Tulli is continually in a state of postmodern creation and
maintenance; disrepair and repair. Her novel “Dreams and Stones,” recounts the
creation myth, through the postmodern lens, and creates a narrative that has
neither narrator, character(s), story, narrative, or plot; but rather recounts
through the objective perspective of some distant and haphazard voice, in the
most poetic documentary tone, the creation of a city, being either created or
rebuilt through the wishes and dreams of the populace. The novel is
characterized in a polarizing fashion. Some have described it a work of poetic
prose (or prose poem); while Magdalena Tuli maintains with singular certainty
that it is a novel. It has been called a critique of the traditional creation
myth, as well as dissertation on the apocalypse. Others have deemed it an
allegorical rendering of the rebuilding of Warsaw, after the Second World War.
The author offers no elucidation to either claim, and instead promotes the
interpretation readers and critics entertain. These metafictional qualities,
first established in “Dreams and Stones,” would follow later on in her other
novels: “Moving Parts,” “Flaw,” and “In Red,” where gradually traditional
elements of novels were introduced, though always with postmodern twists, and
often playfully; until finally settling on the most conventional notion of a
novel—at least by Magdalena Tulli’s fashion. Her latest works, yet to be
translated, take a more autobiographical approach to her literary. They are
introspective journeys, where Tulli traces the shadow of the Second World War
and the Holocausts impact on her mother, who had survived the concentration
camps, but carried the shadow into her life afterwards, and subsequently
endowed it on to her own daughter, who grappled with notions of guilt, grief,
and death from an early age. The works of Magdalena Tulli are true feats of a
literary master mind. Her production is little and slow, but the quality is
world class. Her literary language is dense, poetic, and lush. It riddles with
vibrant images, metaphors, and symbolism. She is able to deconstruct the world
with surgical precision, and in its ruin reconstruct yet another world of a
completely different shape and form. In Magdalena Tulli’s literary work
perception creates and shapes reality and defines how an individual interacts
with it. Magdalena Tulli is talented, as much as she is a literary genius. A
truly remarkable writer, who is deprived of the appreciation she deserves.
However, the recent Nobel no provided to Olga Tokarczuk will hinder Tulli’s
chances in the immediate future.
Leonard
Nolens – Belgium – When it comes to Flemish language poetry, Leonard Nolens
would be considered the most striking and distinguished contemporary
representative at work. Nolens entire oeuvre is described as encompassing and
uncompromising. His early work is noted for being experimental, hermetic, and
baroque inspired; while his later works are noted for eschewing his earlier
experimental forms, hermetic styles, and abandoning baroque influence, in
favour of a more somber and plain language. Despite striping his poetic style
of baroque ornamentation and experimental forms, in favour of a more
conversational and approachable language, Nolens poetry has not lost its desire
to host discussions on a range of subjects, though philosophical and profound
in nature. Apart from being a poet, Leonard Nolens is a noted memoirist (or
diarist). His recent collections of poetry have seen Nolens depart from the
singular ‘I,’ and move towards the interpersonal ‘we,’ in his poetry. His
recent collection of poetry: “Tell the Children We’re No Good,” is a collection
of poems which has been described as generational with the use of ‘we,’ and
personal with the salt and pepper of ‘I.’ In this collection of poems, Nolens
warningly reflects on his generation, but also casts a critical and honest eye
on its blunders. The shift from the singular to communal shows Leonard Nolens
desire to move beyond the personal to the collective with his discussions,
observations, and thoughts.
Ersi
Sotiropoulos – Greece – A personal favourite, Ersi Sotiropoulos is one of the
most critically acclaimed Greek poets and writers at work in contemporary Greek
literature. Her novel “Zig Zag Through The Bitter Orange Trees,” was praised as
the best book of the decade at the turn of the twenty-first century, and became
the first novel to win both the Greek State Prize for Literature, as well as
the Book Critics Award. Sotiropoulos is often described as an avant-garde
writer, which may shock those who are first introduced to her work. Her prose
is clean, deprived of unnecessary ornamentation, and it’s skillfully designed
with jeweler’s eye for accessible filigree. Yet below the surface of the bone
bare prose, one begins to see her experimental or avant-garde characteristics
come through. Her short stories depict the uncertain grounds of relationships;
either between parent and child, husband and wife, or brother and sister; as a
reader, one is not entirely away of how they reached such a sudden, or absurd,
or violent climax as if the characters reasoning or rational are exaggerated or
over reactionary for the situation. Her recent work is noted for tracing the
bankruptcy of the Greek soul, as the financial crisis has emptied the wallets
of its citizens, caused political discourse and uncertainty, and drained moral
character from the state. “Eva,” employees the female psyche of the character
Eva, to offer an x-ray and diagnostic imaging of the complete collapse of
Greece’s moral infrastructure, its political institutions, and its citizens in
crisis and fear; as the financial crisis pillages and pilfers the Greek
populace of hope, stability, and places them on the edge of collapse and ruin.
Her most recent English translation is the fictionalized three-day sojourn in
Paris, of the Egyptian-Greek poet, Constantine P. Cavafy. Ersi Sotiropoulos had
called, Cavafy, a monumental Greek poet of the last century. The only two Greek
writers to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature in the past were poets:
Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis. They are classics in scale and scope,
heralding back to the ancient Greek lyrical traditions, though with modern
though, association, and perspectives. Ersi Sotiropoulos maintains a noticeable
distance between herself and these poets, and the classical nature of Greek
literature, and has provided commentary on the Age of Austerity in her novel
“Eva,” (not yet translated into English) where the titular character, escapes a
Christmas Eve party to roam the ghost streets of Athens and encounters the
desperation thriving under the oppressive atmosphere of austerity and fiscal
restraint. Her other novel “I Think I Might Like You,” (also as of yet not
translated into English) recounts the relationship of two lovers through the
epistolary novel format, though with modern telecommunication methods.
Javier
Marias – Spain – Javier Marias, is one of Spain’s most renowned, recognized,
and established writers, with international recognition and appeal—especially
towards English language readers. He studied English philology, translated
classic of English Literature into Spanish, as well as lectured at Oxford on
the art of translation. Javiar Maris had an upbringing, surrounded by
intellectualism and dissidence; his father a Spanish philosopher was persecuted
by Franco’s regime, and was imprisoned, for his teachings and criticisms. Due
to the hostility of Spain under Franco’s rule, Javiar Maris along with his
family, moved briefly to the United States, where his father lectured at
universities. Throughout his childhood and adolescences, Javiar Maris proved
himself as a literary prodigy; writing his first ‘mature,’ short story when he
was fourteen and later publishing in a collection of short stories titled:
“While the Women are Sleeping.” He published his first novel at the age of
seventeen, and his second novel while studying in university. His work is noted
for its postmodern pastiche and playfulness, combing genres, themes, and
preoccupations to bring a conceptive fragmented perspective of the modern
world, while remaining a sense of humour and playfulness. He is regarded as one
of most important contemporary Spanish language writers currently at work.
László
Krasznahorkai – Hungary – The Hungarian monk of The Apocalypse, gained
immediate recognition and notoriety when his infamously long, dense, difficult,
and mammoth novels began to appear in English translation. Even before his
works were translated, they had a reputation in European literary scenes. The
sentences of Krasznahorkai have always gained attention from readers and
critics, those serpentine black rivers of ink and text, continue for pages,
soldered together with comas, semicolons, and colons. When a period does make
an appearance its merely a break, not a finite end. László Krasznahorkai’s work
is marred with dread and unease, an otherwise disquieting atmosphere. The
landscape of Krasznahorkai’s narratives take place in a strange Kafkaesque
landscape: rural Soviet collective farms, poor communities, ruins of
desperation, bars of neither character nor charm, or desolate artistic
retreats. From there, like some aged underground Rockstar turned monkish prophet,
László Krasznahorkai provides the narrative of those who call such places home.
In this same fashion, the youthful, educated and hipster academics picked up
the Hungarian writer as some literary fashion statement, trading his books like
postmodern currency. His works stuck home for them: he is dark, strange, and
desolate; a writer completely different then what constitutes as contemporary
American Literature, with its usual brand of bread and butter of family dramas,
narratives, and otherwise rehashing postmortem novels parading themselves as
postmodern greats. László Krasznahorkai provides a reprieve from the otherwise
stagnant literary scene of the Americas; with his bleak landscapes, despair
ridden characters, and bleak humour flows endlessly through the slow-moving
lava text. On a personal note, my reading experience with László Krasznahorkai,
is one based off respect, but lukewarm enjoyment. His work requires the level
of care, patience, tolerance, and marathonic resilience and tenacity, which I
do not have. There is respect in what he can do, what he has done, his
discipline to his form, his unrelentless singular spirit and dedication to his
style, preoccupation, and themes, it’s still not a literary work which I find
easy or enjoyable in consumption. One cannot deny his work for being masterful
in craft, monumental in form, and foreboding in deliverance, László
Krasznahorkai is uncompromising, which is also what endears him to his
readers. László Krasznahorkai is a giant
of global letters and international literature, his shadow is eclipsing, and
undeniable. The talents of his work blister and push forward. Denying,
Krasznahorkai his place on the literary stage is inappropriate, if not
impossible. The Nobel Prize for Literature would not be a surprise for the
author, and this point one is merely discussing when not if; though advise all
against speaking in such absolute terms, as the Swedish Academy has proven time
and time again, they do not enjoy being predictable or complacent. Though I
truly do think that its merely a matter of when for László Krasznahorkai, there
is no point in denying the postmodern master of the apocalypse.
Dag
Solstad – Norway – As many writers do in their youth, Dag Solstad, began his
literary career with great controversy in his youth, by writing blatant
political narratives, which sympathized and even promoted Lenin-Marxist ideals.
Sand and time have the marvelous ability to smoothing out the coarse and
pompous edges of youth, and soon Dag Solstad would abandon his less then
bashful political themes for more philosophical and existential ruminations.
His prose and his work is considered some of the best of Norway, and the gold
standard of comparison. Solstad’s mature work is known for focusing on the
existential crisis’s of the everyday man who deals with abandonment, the
passage of time, the frustrations of life, and the attempts at creating meaning
in another wise meaningless world, deprived of any universal concepts or
contexts of higher sense of meaning beyond the ones in which the individual is
responsible to give it. Yet, what if the individual is incapable of giving
their life meaning, beyond the pointlessness of job and paycheque? Dag Solstad
ponders and wonders about these everyday existential individuals who
continuously find themselves abandoned and realizing their life has past and
left them stranded on the flotsam and jetsam of life’s shipwreck, adrift in a
sea apathetic and disinterested in their course of life. His work has been
called philosophical, political, and experimental—all of which does not matter
to Solstad, whose peculiar and particular breed of writing and ironic sense of
realism, continuous to provoke the imagination and ask questions about human
destiny in the world.
Zsuzsa
Takács – Hungary – the “doyenne of contemporary Hungarian Poetry,” as described
by World Literature Today; though Zsuzsa Takács is often overlooked by
comparison to other contemporary and widely translated Hungarian writers:
László Krasznahorkai and Péter Nadas, who are noted for their dense,
philosophical, and at times apocalyptic works, which are deemed the highest
caliber of serious literature. Despite this, Zsuzsa Takács has been a quiet voice,
but striking voice within the wings, her poetry striking, forceful and sharp.
Since her initial debut in the nineteen-seventies, Takács poetic voice was
already developed, with motifs that would reoccur continually: urban landscape
items: trams, streets, and promenades along the waterfront. Takács, poetic
themes range from transformation and metamorphosis to love and death; all the
while wrapped up in her signature ironic humour, with its misunderstandings,
and double-entendres. Zsuzsa Takács is a unique poet in Hungary. She followed
the Postwar Poet, who in returned gave their blessings and praise, to her early
poetic work. She had the privilege of observing her country’s metamorphosis
since her debut, from one ideology to another—from the stifiling political
atmosphere of the Soviet Union, complete with ideological constraints, and
demands; to the independent nation of Hungary, which now moves towards a
stronger more ‘ultra-nationalistic,’ perspective, in contemporary politics. In
her early poems, she discussed homelessness as a state of existence, and then
remarked on the claustrophobic realities of: apartments, rooms, and hospital
wards. Zsuzsa Takács most recent collections of poems showcase her own literary
transfigurations, where alongside the poems, the writer had also included works
of prose (short stories or prose poems), in which she comments on the poetry of
others, and her own. Zsuzsa Takács is a
Hungarian treasure, one who is waiting for greater English introductions.
Jón
Kalman Stefánsson – Iceland – Iceland is a small nation residing in the
Atlantic Ocean, who’s closest neighbours include: the Faroe Islands and
Greenland; while further on Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
(specifically Scotland). Despite being small, Iceland is regarded as one of the
most literary in the world. Icelandic authors are also no strangers in finding
success in translation, and are often noted for its powerful literary talents,
such as the lyricist turned prose writer: Sjon. Jón Kalman Stefánsson is a dark
horse of Iceland letters. His novels carry unique and often foreboding titles:
“Heaven and Hell,” and “About The Size of the Universe.” The novels of Jón
Kalman Stefánsson beckon forth the Medieval Iceland Saga’s of the past. They trace
the profound exploration of life, love, desire, and of course death, all in the
rugged, harsh, and breathtaking landscape of Iceland, a land of fire and ice.
Jón Kalman Stefánsson has been nominated for the Booker International Prize, as
well as the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize on four different occasions. He
is an author who with a profound simplicity remains concerned with the human
condition’s primeval nature, which lurks beneath our societal image of
ourselves; there lurks the carnal and primal urges, hankering for release,
through the unabashed and raw need for desire. All of this is recounted through
the deceptive simplicity of prose, detailed with a poet’s acumen to mine right
to the heart of the matter, with a keen philosophical eye, continually
observing the wayward wills and oppression of the human condition. Jón Kalman Stefánsson, came to more prominent
attention last year, when he was considered one of the nominees for the
revolutionary ‘New Academy Literature Prize,’ which sought to fill the void
left behind by the absent Nobel Prize for Literature. Since then Jón Kalman
Stefánsson, has been mulled and ruminated on as a possible, contender—but no
more than any other writer.
Viivi
Luik – Estonia – Some writers sit or remain dormant after becoming their
initial publication. They are unsure if they can repeat the success of their
first work. Others never reached any success the first time around and worry
about publishing into the void again. Viivi Luik has never had an issue with
publishing. She has been described as the Estonia literary ‘wunderkid,’ her
first collection of poetry was published when she was eighteen in the Estonian
Literary Golden Years of the nineteen-sixties, and she was noted for being a
changing wind in the Estonian literary scene. This is perhaps why, Viivi Luik
is often regarded as the Canary poet, for her ability to take note of the
changing poetic predilections, sociopolitical atmosphere, and economic tides,
but also the personal, private, and sensual changes of the human heart. Her
poetry is often noted for its chameleon like flexibility, nimble measures, and
undying musicality. Her poetic forms often reflect and refract, personal
observations, private moments, intimate minuets, into the mystical and
universal, through the metaphors and lens of the natural world, landscape, and
other external forces. Her poetic voice is ever sensual, preceptive, and
understanding of the world in which we all inhabit, but experience is such
different and unique measures. Beyond her poetry, Viivi Luik has also published
three novels. Her first two novels were noted for their immediate poeticized
language. Language, experience, and the depiction of the intimate and
immediate, are often noted as focal points of the novels, not the usual narrative
structures typically used in prose deconstruction and criticism. These first
two novels were noted for their depiction of the political situations of the
Eastern Europe and life behind the Iron Curtain in the grand Soviet Union. “The
Seventh Spring of Peace,” tells the story of an Estonian childhood, riddled
with absurdity, fear, and paranoia, in the countryside, as a child seeks to
make sense of the macro machinations of the world around them, fit with fear
and uncertainty. “The Beauty of History,” recounts the love story of a young
woman and a young man, during the Prague Spring, and reflects the mentality and
reality of the Baltics at the time, and the malaise of Eastern Europe in its
grey fortification. Viivi Luik has also written, essays on matters of art,
literature, and the conceptual meaning human beings bring to them. She is one
of Estonia’s most beloved and special writers, who is unfortunately under
translated and underappreciate
Kjell
Askildsen – Norway – Kjell Askildsen is regarded as one of the most important
Norwegian writers working in the contemporary short story; often characterized
as a master of the form. His short stories, utilize minimal language and bare
bone plots, to showcase human relationships at their most intimate and fraught,
where moments of misunderstanding explode and crumble the foundations of time
and age, which has supported the characters. His work has had a lasting impact
on Scandinavian literature, as he is often considered a mentor of many new and
young contemporary writers. Despite the intimate nature of the short story, and
the fact that Askildsen focuses on relationships within his work, there is
glacial permafrost which is imbedded in his work. His landscapes are derelict
and almost apocalyptic in their Beckettian minimal bleakness, with similar
draperies and events going through them, ashtrays and stale cigarette butts,
beer, coffee, as well as funerals. In such a timeless void, deprived of
coherent sense of time and place, there is little for the characters to hope
for, and so they succumb sexual impulses, and dream of erotic desires to keep
them company. In his machine-like prose, with its repetitive mantras, and
steely accuracy, now rusted by time and fate, but not forgotten; Kjell
Askildsen presents the plight of the contemporary human: continually
envisioning and craving for the warmth and intimacy of companionship, but is
thwarted by misunderstandings, and in the end left disenfranchised and disposed
in a world deprived of such luxuries, simply by human failure and fault.
Sjon
– Iceland – There is perhaps no other Icelandic author who is as well known in
the English language readership quite like Sjon, whose work spans multiple
literary formats including poetry, drama, and novels. As a writer Sjon has also
participates in collaborative ventures with other creative individuals in
different spheres, such as the Icelandic singer Bjork in the composition of her
songs, as well as participating in scriptwriting for films. Despite poetry
being SJon’s first foray into the literary scene, with his often-experimental
poetry being published and endeared by readers early on, Sjon found greater
success with his novels. “The Blue Fox,” was the first novel to gain Sjon a
paramount literary reputation. The whimsical tale behaved like a blend of
fairytale and historical narrative (if by time alone), the novel went on to
receive the Nordic Council Literature Prize. “The Blue Fox,” ensured that Sjon
would become a perennial writer in English translation and has since been invited
to participate in the Future Library Project. Much like Gyrðir Elíasson, Sjon
does not pay homage to the great sagas of Iceland’s literary past, but instead
has carved out a uniquely postmodern perspective to provided a fragmented
overview of the strange and perplexing world we currently inhabit, one which
faces climate crisis, self-inflicted annihilation, political fallout, rising
and evolving technology that both helps the world, but also creates further
class division, and present us with ever greater utopias and dystopian
possibilities.
Ryszard
Krynicki – Poland – A contemporary of the late Adam Zagajewski, Ryszard
Krynicki also belongs to the literary movement and generation aptly called:
Generation ’68; in reference to the political movement of the late sixties and
early seventies of the Twentieth Century. The early poetry of Ryszard Krynicki
is noted for its accumulative and pointed imagery, reflecting the
meaninglessness, the danger, the oppression, and the uncertainty of the time. Krynicki’s
poetry was depicted as hostile, and threatening, a wasteland of corruption,
which took its toll of the everyday individual, in the most exact and taxing of
manners, slowly stripping them of their dignity, their humanity, and their
freedoms. The ‘narrators,’ or ‘protagonists,’ of his poetry often remark at the
incomprehensibility of their realities, an unknowing inclination, a bewildered
disorientation, and an attempt to revolt against the falsehoods of ideology and
communist: “new speak.” Due to his open disregard and dissent against the
reigning political movement of the time, Ryszard Krynicki was censored and
forbidden from publishing. This did not stop his literary output or his
outright refusal to abide by the communist rule of the time, which was slowly
beginning to erode, implosion now: certain. After the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, and the abandonment of the communist ideology, and a newfound sense of
independence, the perspective of Eastern Europe began to change. Some Eastern
European countries failed to get a ride on the economic train, which was
passing through, while others such as Poland, Czechia, a unified Germany, and
Estonia quickly took advantage of the newfound freedom. The poetry of Ryszard
Krynicki also changed into a different direction, moving away from the
multifaceted postmodern baroque poetry of the communist era, Krynicki took
short poetic discussions, reministicent of haikus, where instead of seeking
political autonomy, freedom, and social liberty, they are reminiscent of a
spiritual pilgrimage.
Mircea
Cartarescu – Romania – Mircea Cartarescu, is one of the most critically
acclaimed and well-known Romanian writers, currently at work today. He is a
respected poet and prose writer, who began his literary endeavors as a
rebellious poet, belonging to the ‘Blue Jean Generation.’ Yet, since begin his
literary career, Cartarescu has moved beyond his youthful literary beginnings
of the eighties and has become a revered Romanian postmodernist master. His
first prose work was a collection of five short stories called “Nostalgia,”
which already began to show the developing themes and styles of Cartarescus
later works. His most well-known and praised work however is his ‘Orbitor,’
trilogy, which had taken fourteen years to compose, and spans more than a
thousand pages. The trilogy is noted for its attention to detail, fine-tuned
language, and hallucinogenic prose. “Blinding: Volume 1, the Left Wing,” is the
only part of the trilogy currently translated into English, and is a massive
novel to get through; but the prose is sensual, vivid, surreal, engrossing and
a true delight to read; though one should take their time to read it, to savour
it, and its audacious romp through history, memories (envisioned, embellished,
and honest), and the mythical city of Bucharest.
Claudio
Magris – Italy – In the same fashion as the late Roberto Calasso, Claudio
Magris is a polemist, whose work is essay based then narrative or poetry or
drama. Perhaps most famous for his travelogue and historiographical account
“Danube,” where Magris traces the famous European river from its wellspring to its
eventual end, and through every country, town, countryside, culture, language,
and writer who who heralds from the region, Claudio Magris pays special
attention to each. “Danube,” is as much a historical travelogue as it was a
literary exploration. Other works include “Snapshots,” brief essayistic
accounts and observations from the controversial to the personal. “Journeying,”
is yet another collection of travel essays by one of the most renowned and
remarkable Italian language observers and writers, “Journeying,” accounts the
impressions, observations and thoughts Magris recorded through his travels,
transforming the travelogue form further into a scholarly approach. Claudio
Magris would be a unique choice for the Nobel Prize for Literature, a writer of
essayistic approach, though precedence can be argued in favour of Magris with
such Laureates as Svetlana Alexievich who is often viewed as a journalist and
historian, and Bertrand Russell who was a mathematician and a philosopher.
Mikhail
Shishkin – Russia – Russian literature has long been known as the grand gold
standard of literature. Its golden writers from: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo
Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, and Anton Chekhov, retain their relevancy and their
provocative powers to this day. Though Russia’s history is noted for its darker
periods, and the Soviet Union, may have crushed many intellectual pursuits, the
Silver Age persevered with: Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Ivan Bunin,
which soon passed its moonlight glow on to later twentieth century writers:
Joseph Brodsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Marina Tsvetaeva. The torch from
its radiant golden sun to its gentle silver moon, passed on and on. Today, Mikhail
Shishkin is considered one of the most prominent and acclaimed writers of
twenty-first century Russian literature. Shishkin is well revered for his beautiful,
lush language, which is praised for its lyricism and delivered magisterial
control. Mikhail Shishkin is noted for tackling large themes and preoccupations
in his work such as history, time, love (ever eternal), death and the
resurrecting properties of memory. His work are grand scale epics, echoing the
Golden Age of Russian literature; he is quoted to saying his major Russian
influences are Leo Tolstoy, who taught him not to be afraid of naivety. Anton
Chekhov who passed on his love and devotion to humanity. As well as Ivan Bunin,
who encouraged him to never compromise. Alongside his influences, Shishkin has
been compared to James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov. Despite being praised as of
the most important and influential Russian writers at work today, Mikhail Shishkin’s
relationship with Russia is complicated. He currently resides in Zurich,
Switzerland, where he has worked as an interpreter for refugees. Mikhail
Shishkin is a staunch critic of Putin and his government, calling it a regime
riddled with corruption and filled with criminals. Despite his universally
daunting themes, his complex use of language written with lyrical elegance; Mikhail
Shishkin is known for probing emotional destinies alongside the ethereal
elements, which rule with intangible presence, and yet all too real authority.
He has been described as a living classic, and an exceptional example of a
writer who blends the Golden Age realism and romanticism of Russian literature,
with postmodern sensibilities, as he seeks to broaden the Russian dialogue of
literature once again, away from the political paranoia, prisons, and gulags of
the Soviet Union.
António
Lobo Antunes – Portugal – António Lobo Antunes is the Portuguese postmodernist
master of prose. His novels follow in a similar fashion of other postmodernist
writers such as: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, and László Krasznahorkai.
António Lobo Antunes work is known for being long and exhaustive. Antunes
novels are especially well known for being difficult to read, as they the form
of the stream of consciousness monologue. The monologues which narrate his
novels are known to employee long and winding sentences, where they release
their vitriolic perspective on the reader, regarding the nature of life, the
human condition, politics, and every other subject that can be unearthed under
the sun. Generally, António Lobo Antunes’s novels recount some historical
reference or experience either with war of oppression—reflecting both the
authors experience, as a doctor in Algeria during Portugal’s colonial wars, and
his experience under Salazar’s dictatorship. His novels are often described as
an old man, who releases and unburdens himself of his experiences of violence
and death at any listeners or person who has an ear to spare, and time to
tolerantly pass, with a man on the verge of madness, begging to relinquish his
experiences of mankind at its worst. This often violent and somber perspective
comes from António Lobo Antunes work as a doctor, both Portugal’s colonial
wars, Angola’s war of independence, as well as his later work as a
psychiatrist. His prose is noted to being influenced and reminiscent of William
Faulkner, and his themes are grand, while his format difficult but
rewarding—that if you get past the vitriolic onslaught of mankind at its worst.
Péter
Nadas – Hungary – Peter Nadas, has often been compared to Marcel Proust, for
his preoccupation with memory and times passage; but also perhaps because of
his obscenely long novels; “Parallel Stories,” alone is extraordinarily large,
with a page of one-thousand five hundred and twenty pages, and took the author
eighteen years to write. Both his parents were illegal Communists during World
War II, but survived the war, and found stability under the Communist
dictatorship. Nadas’s father, was head of a government department, before being
accused of embezzlement, though he was exonerated of all charges and
accusations brought against him, he would commit suicide after the ordeal; his
mother, died when Peter was thirteen succumbing to an illness. After his
father’s suicide at sixteen, Nadas was an orphan. He trained to be a journalist
and a photographer, and for a few years worked as journalist and a
photographer, before freelancing and writing fulltime. Since then, Peter Nadas
has been of the most renowned and well-known Hungarian of contemporary
literature, along with László Krasznahorkai. Much like his contemporary
(Krasznahorkai) is known for his doorstopper novels, and his uncompromising
style, which again requires readers to armed with stamina, tolerance, and
patience, as they tread the memory laden works, as they probe the historical
and the personal.
Asia
& the Indo-Subcontinent—
Wang
Anyi- China – Eileen Chang was considered the literary jewel and darling of
Shanghai before the Chinese Civil War, the Communist victory and the subsequent
Cultural Revolution and the eventual takeover of the Communist Party of China.
Chang’s novels were known for their fashionable tastes, while also riddled with
literary sensibilities. By the 1950s, Eileen Chang had left China, and would
later settle in the United States, where she became a recluse and died alone in
her home in 1995. Wang Anyi is often compared to her cosmopolitan predecessor,
Eileen Chang, because both writers have written fervently and devotedly about
Shanghai. Eileen Chang escaped The Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, while
Wang Any came of age in it, where she was forcefully removed from Shanghai and
sent to the rural China for ‘re-education.’ These early experiences impacted
the writers’ literary perspectives, as she was not granted permission to return
to Shanghai until the late 1970’s, at which point her literary career began to
take hold. Initially, Wang Any wrote about the day-to-day lives of the people
she imagined, disregarding the overtly socially influenced and politically
fabricated themes demanded by the Communist Part of China. By writing about the
everyday and the common place, Anyi was able to avoid censors or political
repercussions. Until was not until she was granted permission to attention the
International Iowa’s Writers Workshop, that her literary work grappled with
more engaged perspectives of the China novel, and wrote with a more socially
engaged attributes, which led to controversy and discussion. Though not
politically inflammatory in nature which would provoke the ire and consequence
of the Communist Party. Anyi did challenge social and conventional taboos such
as carnal love and homosexuality (in a platonic format). Despite her prolific
output and writing, Wang Anyi is most recognized for her novel: “The Song of
Everlasting Sorrow,” in the English literary world. The novel recounts the life
of a woman born in the 1940’s Shanghai, and traces her through the Second World
War, the Chinese Civil War, the Cultural Revolution, as well as her life
post-Cultural Revolution. “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” is a prime example
of Wang Anyi’s literary preoccupations and themes: the attention to urban life
in Shanghai riddled with brutal destinies, long lines, dead end jobs, futile
waiting, and indomitable jostling and rudeness of the anonymity of the
urbanized world.
Choi
Seung-ja - (South) Korea - (South) Korean poetry has been dominated by Ko Un
(at least on the international stage). Ko Un is often considered the perennial
Nobel Prize for Literature candidate heralding from the Korean Peninsula. Yet,
through government intervention, investment and promotion, Korean literature
has become a staple of the Translated Literature market. This promotion has
brought to light many writers who have gained solid footholds in English
translation, such as: Han Kang, Bae Suah, and Hwang Sok-yong; who have also
proven that Korean literature is not just riddled with poetry. Korean poetry
has been an important cultural influence, especially during the 1980's and the
democratization movement, where prose lagged the necessity to record the pulse
of the movement and moment at that specific time. Prose can only ruminate
after, while poetry can encapsulate immediately. Poetry also became the slogans
and chants of the movement, recited by the people, and painted on the facades
of buildings. Poetry became both a participant and transcriptionist of the movement.
Much like the poets: Moon Chung-hee and Kim Hyesoon; Choi Seung-ja is best
described as a feminist's poet. Unlike Moon Chung-hee, the subtlety of revolt
is neglected in favour of explicit exact revolution in perspective. Though,
where Kim Hyesoon is perhaps more post-modernist and shamanistic in her poetry,
recalling the old traditions of Korean mysticism into a postmodern and
convoluted realities of the new world. Choi Seung-ja, maintains the emboldened
firebrand virtues paraded by Kim Hyesoon, but does not subscribe to the
shamanistic perspectives or traditions. In lieu, Choi Seung-ja writes with
unflinching clarity, vitriol and pointedness that penetrates the reader. Her
work is uncompromising and unflinching in its existential examinations and social
critiques. The poet’s personal vivisection and clinical observations of one's
own personal experience, framed within the confines of social realities and
expectations, becomes a twisted portrait of reality that is cruel as it is
malicious, haunted with the putrid reality of a eventual death, which is both
existential expectation and conclusions, and perhaps the only state of
reprieve. Her later poetry has been marked with less brutal and ferocious.
Though death is noted and circles in the peripherals and margins of the poet's
work; the imagery and subject has become less revolting and abrupt. Instead,
the later poetic work of Choi Seung-ja is marked with a more subdued acceptance
of the ennui of life, time passing by and death encroaching, though the venom
has since subsided. On a final note, fellow poet and contemporary, Kim Hyesoon
described the poetry of Choi Seung-ja as "the moans of pain by someone who
has not been loved."
Duong
Thu Huong – Vietnam – The Vietnam War was often considered one of the biggest
political and military blunders of the 20th Century. Just like its
predecessor the Korean War, which divided (and still divides) the Korean
Peninsula; the Vietnam War rouse suspicion and questions of the ethical
efficacy of the American War Machine, which had been glorified and promoted
during the Second World War (and intermediate post-war years) as unstoppable in
its victorious virtues. The Vietnam War, by contrast presented the notion of
war not as a patriotic parade, but one of horror, trauma, and often inhumane
slaughter. The rise of mass media showcased its ability to present a narrative
to both gather support of the public, but also their accusations of
savagery. The war itself did not unite a
country; it divided it. Since then, the translation of Vietnamese literature
has been rare and often limited. Duong Thu Huong has often been the most
translated Vietnamese writer in the English language, mainly due to her work
being dissident in nature. In 1989, Duong Thu Huong was expelled from the
Communist Party for her criticism of the rampant corruption in the communist government.
She would later be imprisoned for her critical writings against the government,
subsequently she would lose her job as a prizewinning screenwriter, her works
were banned from publication, and she was forced to earn a living as a
translator. Further insult was added, as the writer was prohibited from forming
any group, party, or movement which could be seen as operating in complete
contrast or autonomous to the government. In order for Duong Thu Huong to
express commentary on freedom and democracy for Vietnam, Thu Huong would need
to turn to her pen, but was denied publication and threatened with further
imprisonment. In 2006, Duong Thu Huong was granted permission to leave Vietnam,
and has since resided in exile in Paris, where she promotes change through
uncensored and critical writings. Her novels and stories often take the form of
conventional narratives and stories, often with subtle political annotations
and context, from there the author is able to provide a fierce and fiery
barrage of criticism levelled against the communist government of Vietnam, and
the corrupting eroding influence it has on the state and the citizens. In this
case, Duong Thu Huong is considered one of the strongest writers in translation
heralding from Vietnam, based off translation quantity alone, and the rarity
the countries literature has found in other foreign languages. The promotion of
humanistic ideals: freedom of speech and thought, independence, autonomy, are
strong pillars of the author to stand on as well.
Yōko
Ogawa – Japan – It has been only recently that Yōko Ogawa has received a warmer
introduction in the English language literature world, with the publication of
the translation of her novel: “The Memory Police.” The novel despite being
originally written decades prior, became a metaphorical parable of the COVID-19
Pandemic, which was shortlisted the Booker International Prize. The drought and
lack of appetite for reading Yōko Ogawa’s work in the English language, is that
Haruki Murakami has been the dominate Japanese writer in English translation.
Murakami is accessible and very western orientated, which means English readers
can consume his books without alienation while still maintaining that illusion
of ‘exotic foreign literary flare.’ Publishing is first and foremost, and every
publishing began to search for the next Murakami, and some mistakenly attempt
to market Ogawa as another version, which is the speculation why Yōko Ogawa is
scantly translated into the English language. On the contrary though, Ogawa has
found a devote readership, with lengthy translations and publications of her
work in France. Yōko Ogawa’s literary output is noted for its grotesque,
macabre, and subtle violent tropes. Her literary themes are centered around the
ideas of memory, loss, and absence. This immediately distinguishes her from her
contemporary, Haruki Murakami, whose uses more surreal dreamscapes, and magical
realism romps; where Yōko Ogawa fixates on more psychological, interpersonal,
and intrapersonal environments, with the subtle inclinations of the visceral
and vicious lurking around the mundane edges. Ogawa’s literary language it
straightforward and plain, though it will verge on the subtle, poetic. while
never entering the stages of extraordinary lyricism. She has been endorsed by fellow
countrymen and Nobel Laureate Kenzaburō Ōe; who has praised Ogawa for giving
expression to the subtle psychological workings of the human mind, through
prose which is both gentle and searing in its penetrating perspective. Yōko
Ogawa is a superb writer, renowned for her unadorned literary style, which
explores the peculiarities of memory, and the ghoulish world of loss and
absence. Her narratives often fixate on the struggles of outcasts (be it
physical or mentally deranged), who are at odds with the claustrophobic
society, which seeks and demands conformity, abject assimilation, and
superficial perfection. Ogawa traverses the shadows of the modern individual’s
psyche, whereby she paints an intimate portrait of a society deceiving itself
of its own imperfections and madness; or a society on the brink of losing its
own memory in willful consent, in order to escape the tragedies of the past in
favour of the uncertainties of the future. Yōko Ogawa’s work is not grand or
epic, but rather intimate and endearing, as it fixates on the private and
personal tragedies of the individual mirroring and reflecting the experiences
of a greater society as a whole, especially the crack which have slowly over
time become chasms and canyons, where the macabre and the grotesque dance in
the shadow of the abyss, and in the ripe and rotten suppression of modern
society.
Mend-Ooyo
Gombojav – Mongolia – Mend-Ooyo Gombojav is considered one of Mongolia’s most
critically acclaimed writers. Known for the versatility of forms in which he
writes in including poetry, short stories, novels, and essays. He first
embarked on a literary career at the age of thirteen when he wrote his first
poem under the tutorship of Dorjiin Gombojav, who was his mentor. In his early
twenties, Mend-Ooyo Gombojav became a founding member of the underground
literary movement called ‘Fire,’ in Mongolia, which would set the stage as an
early milestone as a movement revolutionizing and modernizing Mongolian
literature. Over the latter half of the twentieth century Mongolia would begin
to chance its political landscape, and Mend-Ooyo Gombojav was considered one of
the greatest writers shaping and influencing the literary landscape. By the
nineties, the singular communist party rule had come to an end, and democratic
reforms were taking shape. Free from presenting his work to the communist
censors, Mend-Ooyo Gombojav was able to freely write and publish his work
without meeting the constraints of ideological demands. During this time,
Mend-Ooyo Gombojav wrote extensively about the pastoral and nomadic culture and
heritage of Mongolia. These poems are often considered the most important works
that Mend-Ooyo Gombojav has produced, as they presented a unified identity of
Mongolia through its heritage, by celebrating the nomadic culture and history.
Over the past three decades, Mend-Ooyo Gombojav became an increasingly
striking, vibrant, and powerful voice in Mongolian literature. His bibliography
ranges between his renowned poetry to novels, as well as scholarly and essayistic
work.
Kim
Hyesoon – (South) Korea – Some female writers who write with an inclination
towards feminism, do so in subtle and otherwise graceful ways, without engaging
in immediately shocking imagery; Kim Hyesoon, on the other contrary engages in more
extreme, almost fanatical poetic discourse. She has been described as an
engaged and revolutionary feminist poet, one whose poems are disquieting in
their surreal, visceral, and grotesque imagery. In her poetry, Kim Hyesoon
readily challenges the (South) Korean opinion and perspective of women in societal
standards and hierarchy. Hyesoon readily rips apart these social conventions;
and casts a critical eye on the socio-economic system, as the cause of the
social hierarchy, and the subjection of woman. Kim Hyesoon views capitalism as
directly linked to (South) Korean patriarchal oppression, which views woman as
less than, or a lesser status then their male counterparts. Her poems are noted
for their visceral, violent, macabre, and grotesque imagery, in which she
shockingly displays the uneasy landscape of (South) Korea’s social enclosure,
from the perspective of a woman. The political context which at times frames,
Hyesoon’s poems, are not entirely clear; though she does criticize the (South)
Korea dictatorship, with its willingness to accept neo-colonialism, and indulge
itself in a steady diet of unequal capitalism, which has oppressed and
disenfranchised the vulnerable and neglected of society. With that in mind, Kim
Hyesoon, readily and violently lashed out and rebelled against a system which
unjustly and cruelly seeks to oppress half the population (or more), to a
status of domestic and martial service, with complete dependence on men. Though
her poetry is critical, controversial, visceral, viral and violent, Kim Hyesoon
is well revered and respected poet, as she is engaged and actively participates
in either changing the system through poetry or at least having an informed
debate about the status of women within society. In two-thousand and nineteen
she was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection: “Autobiography of
Death,” which cycles through how individuals and people move through the
structure of death, trauma, illness, and injustice.
Ouyang
Jianghe - China - Throughout the 20th Century Chinese poetry has changed with
the shifting cultural and political turmoil that has impacted the country.
After the Chinese Civil war and the Chinese Communist Revolution, poetry became
a indoctrinating psalms of the people, propagating the propaganda and
prescribed perspectives of the recent ideological victory. By the mid-20th
century, the poem once again shifted its direction into the opaque modern or
'misty school,' of poetry, with such famous poets as: Bei Dao and Duo Duo, who
were considered the new voices of Chinese poetry. These poets were nonetheless
criticized by their conservative predecessors, who viewed them as obscure and
politically dubious (meaning they did not accept the yoke of the Communist
ideology), but they were loved by the public, even though the government sought
to censor and sanction them. The Misty Poets, however, could not be emblazoned
as the torch bearers of the new poetic perspective of China forever. After the
calls for democratic reform failed, a new brand and breed of poets took place,
often referred to as: "The Post-Obscure Poets." These poets changed
the direction of Chinese poetry once again, focusing not on obscurity to
provide commentary on politics, but rather to reflect the aesthetic perspective
of the new reality, and fixated on the beauty of language over political change
or commentary. Politics is still discussed, but in a language that is refined
to evade censorship, and politics is no longer the focal point or subject of
choice; having since been replaced by reflection and contemplation, no longer
motivated by inducing political change. Ouyang Jianghe is a post-obscure poet,
who engages in aesthetic and cross-cultural exchanges with writers from across
the world; and whose poetry reflects on both Chinese heritage, philosophy, and
culture, as well as western philosophy and thought. Through complex language
Ouyang Jianghe has become a stalwart defender of poetry, refuting the notion
that it has no place within the current literary canon of Chinese Literature.
Through cross-cultural exchanges, rumination and reflection, Ouyang Jianghe has
carved out his poetic career as being one that is true to form, subject,
history, and contemporary concern.
Hwang
Sok-yong – (South) Korea – Hwan Sok-yong observed the tragedies and realities of
war. During the Vietnam War, he was charged in ‘Clean Up,’ Operations, where
individuals would come in and erase (‘clean up,’) the civilian massacres that
had taken place. More often than not this meant disposing of the dead in
careless manners, without thought and dignity, as long as the evidence was
erased. Despite the gruesome nature of the work, this would provide and provoke
Hwan Sok-yong to ask himself philosophical questions, as well as compare his
situation with that of his father and his generation, who were conscripted into
the Imperial Japanese army in order to strengthen Japan’s national interest in
the Asian political sphere; Sok-yong, would then question his own conscription
into the Korean army which was to assist in strengthening America’s national
interests and influence in the region. These experiences and questions, would
be the influences for his most famous and first short story: “The Pagoda.”
Since then, Hwan Sok-yong has been critical about the state of Korea calling it
a “state of homelessness.” Sok-yong is also noted for his political activism in
Korea, in which he championed democratic reforms, organized protests, wrote
pamphlets and plays, as well as hosted a clandestine radio show. Now Hwang
Sok-yong is considered one of the greatest prose writers of South Korea in
which he documents the turbulent 20th century of the nation, being
split in two, and used as chess piece by larger foreign powers in a game of
international politics.
Xi
Xi – Hong Kong (China) – Perhaps one of the most remarkable writers of Hong
Kong, Xi Xi has been neglected in English language, to an almost criminal
degree. The only acknowledgement this titan of Hong Kong literature has
received from the English language speaking world was the Newman Prize for
Chinese Literature in 2019, and yet remains under translated. Regardless, in
her home city of Hong Kong, Xi Xi is one of the most renowned and riveting
literary voices. In nominating Xi Xi for the Newman Prize for Chinese
Literature, Dr. Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, commented on the often-overlooked state of
Hong Kong’s literature. The city itself is more renowned for being the
democratic sanctuary from the communist mainland (though that is now
questionable in part thanks to the aggressive actions taken by mainland China
in suppressing and control the otherwise semi-sovereign city), as well as a
sector that revolved around commerce and finance. Literature and cultural
significance are rarely mentioned. Dr. Lai-Ming Ho, notes that Hong Long
literature is often neglected and placed in a secondary position, when up
against its neighbors of China, Korea, and Japan. Yet the literary perspective
and character of the city’s literature is potently unique, and nowhere else is
this observed then in Xi Xi’s work. Dr. Lai-Ming Ho specifically comments on Xi
Xi’s poetry, as it provides the vessel in which the city’s characters and
narratives are distilled through. At once insignificant allegories,
observations or anecdotes become commentaries on the citizens, stories, and
cultural makeup of the city. A microcosm of stories and intertwined lives. Perhaps it’s the understated perspective of
Xi Xi that is endearing. By disregarding the grand statements, pompous
proclamations, and pretentious parades, Xi Xi can give weight to the character
of the city, through intimate portraits and observations which are not burdened
by needless pageantry. Xi Xi’s literary output goes beyond poetry, her short
stories and prose are more recognized and studied in Hong Kong. They vary in form
and subject matter, from the realistic to the surreal or magical realistic in
scope. Regardless of form or structure, Xi Xi remains enthralled and devoted to
the city she has called home. Her literary work remains poignantly concerned
with the challenges the city and its citizens face, as well as the dreams which
weaves themselves through its neighbourhoods, apartment blocks, and narrow
streets.
Ranjit
Hoskote – India (English language) – India is a large and diverse nation on bot
a geographical, regional, cultural, and linguistic level. Hindi is the commonly
spoken language of the national, followed by English, and then Bengali. Despite
being a large and diverse country, with the second largest population in the
world, sadly Indian literature is either grossly under translated, or writers
choose to specifically write in English to ensure they gain a wide and
dispersed readership. Despite writing in
English, Ranjit Hoskote’s poetry does not carry the shadow of precedence that a
lot of English language poetry pulls behind it, giving homage to the great
poets of the past. No, Ranjit Hoskote’s poetry carves a sphere and place in
poetry that is entirely his own and does not recognize or pay unnecessary
tribute to those of the past. Hoskote’s work is intellectually informed;
dynamic and technical with each poetic form utilized; textually appealing and
succulent; all the while being aesthetically concerned with the cultural
preoccupations, and the exploration of the poetic image at hand, to provide an
overview and commentary on the human condition. His themes, images, and poetic
preoccupations are diverse, eclectic, and extensive. When reviewing and
referencing his poetry, Ranjit Hoskote wrote that his poetry cannot be
summarized or reviewed in the context of the logical or regional lens, as the
border between global and provincial concerns have blurred, and the bounds that
maintained these two concerns as separate are now melding into more universal
themes and concerns that touch and influence all human destines regardless of
their location on the map. In his latest collection of poetry, “Hunchprose,” Ranjit
Hoskote tackles the universal question of what defines and separates the notion
of what makes us ‘human,’? How is our civilized concerns now sweeping our
barbaric past to the back corners of our history, where they are to be
neglected and shunned. Where does the notion of home exist within a world in
crisis both climate, genocidal, pestilence and beleaguered with inequality. Ranjit
Hoskote soars overhead and reviews these events, these slow moving extinctual
movements as they weave themes into the existential consciousness of the human
predicament today and becomes a urgent testament by the author of how these
crisis will inevitably change the nature of human destiny.
Ý
Nhi (Hoang Thi Ý Nhi) – Vietnam – Ý Nhi is one of the most important Post-War
poets of her generation. Nhi’s poetry style is noted for its grace, gentleness,
and subtlety. Her subject is always humane, though tinged with the inclinations
of tragedy. Her poetic format is regarded for its modernist form, detailing the
emotions of the Vietnam War, and its last effects on the Vietnam as well as the
populace specifically women. During the Vietnam War, Ý Nhi worked as
journalist, where she recounted and reported the horrors and devastation the
war caused, as it ripped through the country. It is therefore no surprise that
the war has been a major influence on her literary output and work, which
carries a gentle poignant sadness throughout her collections as it depicts the
great loss of the times from a female perspective, be it: lover, husband, son,
child or friend. Her work moves beyond just wartime literature
classification—though it carries the pit of bitterness in itself—there is
always gentle grace and philosophical wisdom, as she works historical themes
and events in the grander narrative and consciousness of society and culture.
Over the past years, Ý Nhi’s reputation and work has begun to find readership
beyond the borders of Asia, with her poetry being translated into French,
Russian, German and Spanish, as well as a few poems have been showcased in
poetry anthologies in English. In two-thousand and fifteen, Ý Nhi became the
first Vietnamese poet to receive the Cikada Prize, whereby her work is expected
to gain even further international recognition in Swedish as well.
Hiromi
Itō – Japan – Japanese poetry is not as well-regarded as other cultural and
literary exports from the island nation (such as Haruki Murakami and video
games). Regardless, Japanese poets remain active in their cultural spheres of
influence. One of the most important poets of the late 20th Century
and contemporary Japanese poetry is, Hiromi Itō. In a similar fashion as
(South) Korean poets, Kim Hyesoon and Moon Chung-hee; Hiromi Itō is often
regarded as one of those unique, revolutionary, and famous feminist poetic perspectives
in the Japanese literary canon. Despite the feminist perspective forced upon
her, and her early poetic predilections were aimed at the relationship between
the sexes, motherhood, womanhood, and child-rearing; her work continually
evolved, adapted, and changed its skin like that of a chameleon, never fixating
or focusing too long on a topic. Her literary perspective and output have
ranged from poetry, to essays, to criticism; but also taken into consideration
Native American oral traditions of storytelling; shamanistic and holistic
poetry; as well as the lifecycle and plants. There is no discipline—be it
cultural, social, literary, or scientific—that Hiromi Itō does not find
endlessly interesting and inspiring, while also not critically analyzing and
studying. For example, in her early career she was a formulative figure in
feminist literary criticism in Japanese. Now she has become an instrumental
figure in literary ecocriticism. Despite the varied interests of her literary
output and career, the qualities of her literary style remain predominate
throughout: that same wandering, longing, transitional quality, continually
seeking the interconnectedness of cultures, people, and history.
Bei
Dao – China – Bei Dao is often cited as one of the most prominent proprietors
and poets of the Misty Poet Generation of contemporary Chinese poetry. The
Misty Poets of contemporary Chinese poetry are a dissident and reactionary
poetic school of writers, who promoted democratic visions and ideals through
their poetic works. Their works were noted for employing obscure imagery and
poetic techniques to both evade censorship, as well as to force the reading
populace to contemplate and think about the poetry they were reading. The Misty
Poets became the de-facto literary enemies of the Cultural Revolution, and the
Communist Party of China. The goal of encouraging the reading populace to think
becomes a dangerous activity in authoritarian institutions. If the populace
thinks, they will then question; if they question, they will begin to question
the reality, they will then question why are subject to the needless suffering
of the ruling elite, which inevitably leads to the downfall of authoritarian
figures, institutions, and governments. A: thinking, questioning and contemplating
population, becomes an uncontrollable one. Bei Dao has inevitably been
disciplined for his poetic dissidence. He has been sent to re-education camps
and forced labour camps in order to understand the back-breaking ideals of
communism. Yet, undeterred the author continued to refine and secretly publish
his works, even in the harsh conditions of his confinement and education. He
participated in the first Tiananmen Square protests, before being forced into
exile, and banned from re-entering the country. In exile, Bei Dao had the
liberty of publishing his poetry, but retained his hazy language and obscure
symbolism to provoke and inspire. China now on a global stage, is showcasing
its aggressive and almost impudent might. Protests in Hong Kong have received
worldwide attention, alongside economic wars between other nations. Awarding,
Bei Dao, would be considered a concise and political message, in complete
contrast to the earlier (mistake) of Mo Yan. Despite the political atmosphere,
Bei Dao’s poetry is noted for its peculiarity, especially in the use of
language, as well as sociopolitical preoccupations. His poetry is forever aimed
in an idealistic direction of the unwavering spirit of human resilience and
stoicism, despite rampant corruption and oppression.
Yoko
Tawada – Japan/Germany – When Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 2017, there was a bit of a discussion of whether he was an English writer or
a Japanese writer. The debate petered out abruptly. It is a fair statement, to propose
that Kazuo Ishiguro is quintessentially an English writer. His literary
language: English; his characters: English (apart from his first two novels).
Yet, his themes carry the intuitive watermark of Japanese sensibilities and
characteristics, but that is where the Japanese aspect of his literary output
and style conclude. They are merely aspects of heritage and cultural
impressions through parental endowment. Yoko Tawada, by comparison resides on
the farther end of the spectrum. She is by all accounts an exponent writer,
working in two languages: her native Japanese and her adoptive German. Tawada
works in both languages and is known for drafting her novels and stories in
both languages, often creating two different manuscripts with two different
voices, often employed in different literary forms. Longer works (such as
novels and plays) are written in Japanese, while shorter works (short stories
and essays) are drafted in German. The duality of language, and the contrary
perspectives created by two different linguistic skins, has influenced Tawada’s
use of language as well. She has expressed language as unnatural, and more
artificial to the point of magical. This sense of bewilderment is often seen
within her use of neologisms and wordplay within her works to provide a
linguistic portrait of the everyday through the perspective of how we discuss
it, communicate it and describe it within the confines of words. Reality in
this sense does not influence language. Language on the contrary frames and
provides the necessary infrastructure to understand and interact with reality.
Beyond language and the peculiar technicalities of language and its relation to
understanding perceptions of reality; borders and boundaries and their
crossings, is another theme of Yoko Tawada’s work. Borders are not just
physical, geographical, ideological, cultural, or linguistic in her work; they
are also philosophical and metaphysical: exploring the difference between
waking life and dreams, animals and humans, thoughts and emotions, and other
abstract phenomena. Language may provide context, but in narratives, Tawada
employees postmodern literary techniques and magical realism to explore these
otherwise strange notions of our differentiating and dissenting perspectives on
a dichotomous plane of contrary opposites. Yoko Tawada, is for all intents and
purposes a cosmopolitan and worldly author, eschewing geographical boundaries
and language barriers to create both a career and literary oeuvre to reflect
the mercurial state of a world and its linguistic shadow theatre. Unlike, Haruki Murakami, Yoko Tawada does not
eschew her Japanese heritage or first language. She employees and embraces
these notions fully. She also embraces and employees her adoptive language of
German, as an equally unique partner in her literary output and career. In this
she exists in a unique no-man’s land, based around a dual perspective of two
different languages and cultures, and endearingly belonging to both, while
Murakami exists continually as an outsider, with self-righteous indignation.
Amitav
Ghosh – India (English Language) – One of the most important English language
writers heralding from the Indo-Subcontinent, Amitav Ghosh’s novels are
critically acclaimed, praised, and beloved by readers. AN epicist in scale and
scope, Ghosh’s work is known for tracing and surveying the rich and colourfully
spiced history of the Indo-Subcontinent. Amitav Ghosh’s “Ibis Trilogy,”
recounts the India under colonial rule of India, including the Opium Trade of
the East India Tracing Company, between India and China; the trafficking of
‘Coolies,’ (poor labourers) from India to Mauritius. The novel traves how
colonialism had ultimately charged the chartered course of the world; how it
introduced new concepts and thoughts, but also sought out to ensure oppression
was instituted for economic gain. The ‘Ibis Trilogy,’ is a epicist novel in
scale and scope, with a marvelous and diverse cast of characters, complete with
introductions and treatises written on such linguistic changes taking place at
the time, in order to increase communication between parties. As a writer
Amitav Ghosh is known for his technically well-crafted novels that have been
thoroughly researched in order to provide historical context and understanding
of the time. Ghosh is not just a writer of finely researched and tuned fiction,
he is often a credible author with numerous collections of essays, treatises,
and non-fiction work also published. “In An Antique Land,” is a work of
ethnography and anthropological study, which continues to defy the usual literary
categorization and taxonomies that have been developed to filter and understand
how the work is to operate within the literary canon. Yet, “In An Antique
Land,” continues to defy any immediate summarization, as it chameleonically
camouflages itself with numerous genres, thoughts, and tropes, from narrative,
travelogue, autobiography, and historical and ethnographic account. For his
essays and his novels, Amitav Ghosh has been described as one of the most
important thinkers of the current generation. Ghosh’s novels provide a
well-researched account of historical events and colonial overview; while
essays further explore these issues and explores theses further with an
academic intention and scholarly attitude, which is neither pompous nor
arrogant, buy thoughtful and once again thoroughly researched.
Li
Ang – Taiwan – Li Ang is unapologetically referenced as a feminist writer;
while those who wish to diminish or insult her Li Ang’s reputation often sneeringly
refer to her as a woman writer, with the sole attempt to reduce her as not a
writer of any professional or creative merit, but woman who merely scribbles
the concerns of those of the same gender. The difference between an aggressive
feminist critical perspective and ‘the woman,’ is immediately made clear when
reviewing Li Ang. Li Ang’s literary work is noted for being candid, vicious,
and strikingly clear as it details with exacting acuity describing the plight,
oppression, and difficult situation faced by women in Taiwanese society. Ang’s
work is transgressive, violent, and unapologetically critical of the masculine
domination in Taiwanese society, which places Li Ang in the otherwise taboo
territory. Despite the impertinent nature of her work, which vivisects and
examines the gender politics in Taiwanese society, and the psychosexuality of
her characters, she is internationally renowned and acclaimed, for breaking
down oppressive social barriers, and displaying the putrid patriarchal
system(s) which are still at work. Beyond examining gender politics, Li Ang has
also written candidly on the state of Taiwanese politics, especially its
continual assertion of independence. If literatures is meant to push the
envelope, explore boundaries, and envision new and striking methods of
communicating ideas, Li Ang dances on the knifes edge while juggling the meat
cleavers which she happily turns towards the butchery of the social hierarchies
and perspectives patriarchal societies.
Yi
Mun-yol – (South) Korea – Yi Mun-yol is one of (South) Korea’s leading
contemporary writers and is considered the public’s favourite author to be
noted for the prize (or so I am told). Mun-yol’s work consists mainly of novels
and short stories, alongside social and political commentaries. Yi Mun-yol’s
literary is generally considered to splitting in to two categories: the macro
and the micro. The first category, the macro—or external—consists of an
exploration via allegorical elements, of Korean society during the past century,
fit with injustices, rampant ideologies, and how everyday lives are shaped and
governed, by the ideological, and powerful external forces over seeing their
lives, and attempts to create solutions for these dilemmas. The second
category, the micro—or internal—comprises of work that is considered
semi-autobiographical in scope, and is more concerned with introspective
exploration, existential themes ranging from angst, identity crises and issues,
and the eventual implosion of society, due to its own failures, but also the
implosion of the individual. The theme of connection and abandonment make ready
appearances in Yi Mun-yol’s work, due to the isolation of his youth, and the
abandonment of his father, who defected to (North) Korea, during the Korean
War. The defection and crime of the father had a profound impact on the Yi
Mum-yol’s upbringing, as he was treated as a social pariah, by peers alike due
to the actions of another. The notion and suffering of division can often be
found as an exploration in both of his categories of work. The work of Yi
Mum-yol is noted for being multilayered and complicated, due to the extensive
use of linguistic wordplay, symbolism, and the characters relation to language.
Translators of Yi Mun-yol’s work, have noted it is difficult to translate this
unique use of homonym wordplay into other languages, as the same form does not
exist. The two categories, plus his own personal background, make Yi Mum-yol a
unique writer, as well as noteworthy.
Can
Xue – China – Can Xue is considered one of Chinas greatest contemporary
writers. This acclaim is provided by Western media and readers, more than it is
in China. In China, Can Xue is regarded as controversial and dissents away from
the main literary circle of the country. Xue’s work is noted for being highly
abstract, surreal, and pushes the limitations of the conventional notions of
postmodernist literature. Her work is often understood as allegorical,
especially in a political context. The author vehemently denies any political
interpretation of her works. Instead, Can Xue, explains her work is more a
literary experiment, which explores the author herself as a subject. This means
as one pulls the layers of the abstract, unconventional, surreal and visceral imagery,
narrative, and situations back, in the deepest pit of the narratives their lies
within itself an aspect of Can Xue; meaning her work initially is constructed
in an autobiographical thought, which is only encapsulated in the surrealistic unconscious
realm of the subsequent narrative after the fact. Can Xue is not considered the
most reasonable authors, nor the easiest read. Her work is riddled with
contrary perspectives, paradox forms, eschewed logic, and as noted above an
abstract and surreal contest, which has gathered both acclaim abroad and
controversy at home. Being one of China’s most experimental writers may come
from the fact Can Xue had little to no formal education, and she is able to use
language and words in a more natural manner that is fluid and not confined with
conventional thought or scholarly study, whereby she is able to explore the
rhythm and cacophonic nature of language which both entices and disrupts
readers. Her narratives are often free from the technical or formal
lectureships provided via education, and her work is not interested in
conforming to the political and ideological standards outlined by more
accessible, promoted, and available authors. Can Xue’s writing on the contrary
has been influenced by a natural interest for language and writing, as well as
years of reading. Often regarded as the Chinese Kafka, Can Xue’s surreal
narratives defy convention, formal narrative, and literary structures, and
unsettle readers with a disquieting and resonating force of an imaginative power
which is strictly her own. If the Swedish Academy is looking for an
unconventional and unyielding writer who is devoted with undeniable lunacy and
originality, then Can Xue is that writer.
Shuntaro
Tanikawa – Japan – One of the most revolutionary Post-War Japanese poets, Shuntaro
Tanikawa rejected the themes of melancholy, death, despair, pain, dishonour,
and ruin of Japanese poetry lamenting and elegizing its defeat of Second World
War. Tanikawa purged the iron of the blood-soaked literature; removed the
bullets lodged in the stanzas; did away with the wasted fervor of war time
propaganda; and washed away the bitterness and disdain of defeat; and instead fixaed
on the future that lay ahead for the Japanese people and society. These
otherwise progressive, hopeful, and optimistic ideals began to change the
literary direction of Japanese poetry (which is why, Tanikawa was credited as
being the Grandfather of Contemporary Japanese Poetry). The radiation burns,
the sacrifice, the proud history are all to be remembered and recognized appropriately
but not showered in excessive adulation. The preoccupation with moving carving
out a brighter future, rather than mourning what was defeated, lost, and now
buried, allowed readers to flock to Shuntaro Tanikawa who were eager to dream
and work towards better days, and leave the despairing drudgery behind. Since
his debut: “Alone in Two Billion Light Years,” Tanikawa, has published over
sixty volumes of poetry and translations. His translations include “The
Peanuts,” and “Mother Goose Rhymes,” into Japanese. Beyond his translation,
Shuntaro Tanikawa has also been an active promoting and supporting Japanese
poets into translations of other languages in order to help them transition
into new linguistic frontiers, and to find new readers in different languages
and cultural backgrounds. Shuntaro Tanikawa would be a deserving Nobel Laureate
for the progressive and broad perspective of his poetry, which spoke to the
Japanese spirit of resilience, but also for his willingness to promote cross
cultural exchanges of different people from different societies and countries,
all in the name of the undying collaborative spirit of what it means to be
human.
Moon
Chung-hee – (South) Korea – Is considered by many as one of the most important
Postwar Poets. Which is a unique assessment as Moon Chung-hee’s poetry is not
concerned with the bloodshed, destruction, and carnage of war, and the
suffering that ripples and radiates from that epicenter, which then leads to
the distinction that Moon Chung-hee is named the most important Female Postwar
Poet. This sadly denotes the inclination and institutions that a poet’s gender
is a defining feature of how their work is to be analyzed and viewed within the
larger canon. Sadly, this immediately recalls the notion that Moon Chung-hee is
expected to write about domestic and cottage like poems, riddled with love and
heart break, commentary on family life and service to the husband, among other
traditionally defined feminine preoccupations. Femininity and female gender are
a preoccupation within Moon Chung-hee’s work, it is neither denied, neglected,
or concealed, femininity and a woman’s perspective are inevitably going to be
influencing viewpoints and informed within her work; yet it is not forcefully
applied or installed under the masculine perspective. For Moon Chung-hee
femininity is not fragile, frail, or delicate in nature. Rather, it is a
paradox of turmoil and bliss. It is the spirit of fire and quiet rebellion. It
is resilient and powerful but treated as sensitive and vulnerable. In the works
of Moon Chung-hee the feminine is not degraded or patronized by the forms of
poetry that demeans itself by discussing the usual tropes of love, longing, and
heartache, these kitschy and cliché perspectives are readily abandoned in
favour of more astute and crystalline observations, reflected in a
straightforward poetic style. The poetry of Moon Chung-hee dances in the dual
nature of itself like fire, in one notion it heats the home, cooks and brings
comforting warmth, while in the next it burns the home down and spreads destruction
without prejudice, consuming everything in its path. The poetry composed by
Moon Chung-hee reviews the female experience as existential, complicated,
revolutionary, and rebellious, a vibrant spectrum of human experiences,
complete with commentary on social, political, and cultural topics and issues.
Her poetry is not denoted or disregarded as trivial, light, or cheap, but
striking in its vigor that has provided a new poetic perspective of the human
experience from the female perspective. A perspective that is fearless and
fiery as it changes the social and gender issues of the country and its poetic
prejudices against itself.
Wang
Xiaoni – China – Often classified as a Misty Poet alongside Bei Dao, Duo Duo,
and Yang Lian; Wang Xiaoni lacks the political motivations and convictions
found in the works of the Misty Poets, whose obscure poetry sought to provoke
and inspire democratic reforms, principles, and social movements through
literature. Instead Xiaoni has eschewed political stances in favour of a distinct
and personal poetic form and style which emphasizes emotional resonance, and a
preoccupation with the personal and private human psyche and soul. Her poetry
is renowned for its striking style that Wang Xiaoni has crafted for herself,
which details the feelings (both physical sensations and emotional response) to
the landscape, scenes, and messages found in the everyday. Early in her
literary career, Wang Xiaoni clarified immediately her interest was in the
personal and its relation to the existence of others, as well as this
relationship with the landscape and society as a whole, entirely deprived of
the adulterating influence of politics and ideological messages. Her poetic
style is noted for its intense detailed effort to capture the internal and introspective
meaning, before being shaped into a musical and graceful composition. The
emotional impact takes precedence over stylistic and compositional concerns.
She avoids linguistic experimentation and is skeptical of writing poetry merely
to showcase the peculiarities of language or the cunning nature of a writer
willing to display their own clever aptitudes. Likewise, she shuns mystical
tropes and themes, which she views with skepticism, all in favour of displaying
and discussing with great accuracy the human spirit, shadow, soul—the psyche of
the individual—fit with its physical sensations and emotional resonances in the
constrained form of poetry.
Ko
Un – (South) Korea – There can be no denying that for years (South) Korea has
lobbied as best they can and presented a case explaining why their literature
and their writers are indeed deserving of a Nobel Prize for Literature. The
nation has stabilized their economy, rebranded itself as democratic and
capitalist in nature, and has begun to showcase its cultural exports through
film (the award-winning film “Parasite,”) music (the whole K-Pop phenomena and
BTS) and the recent hosting of the Winter Olympics in 2018 have all worked to
showcase (South) Korea as a player on the world stage. A Nobel Prize for
Literature to one of their writers, could be utilized to showcase further
recognition of Korean literature and culture within the region. Ko Un was
considered for years and perhaps even decades the only (South) Korean writer
who had a chance of receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. Ko Un’s literary
oeuvre is an encompassing and diverse poetic pallet which range from Zen poems to
imagistic reflections, personal epiphanies, historical epics, as well as
character sketches such as his 30 volume series of poems titled: “Ten Thousand
Lives,” where the poet immortalizes the individuals he has met throughout his
life. Despite the berth and wide range of Ko Un’s career his life has been
upended by personal difficulties and political situations. Ko Un was repeatedly
imprisoned by the (South) Korean dictatorship for his political protests and
democratic advocacy. During the Korean War, he was employed as a gravedigger
before a brief stint as a Buddhist monk. It was not until the 80’s that Ko Un’s
literary work had begun to gain recognition and obtain traction within literary
circles, and his varied and diverse bibliography, was bound to gain further
national and international acclaim. Ko Un is revered as a respected and
recognized poet of great talent and humanistic thought. Though over the years
his cultural and translation monopoly of translated Korean literature into
other languages has been usurped by other writers and the (South) Korean
governments attempts at getting its writers and their literary work translated
and published in other languages, which has resulted in such breakout writers
such as Han Kang and Bae Suah gaining a foothold in the English language. Further
issue has been raised when in 2018, a poet by the name of Choi Young-mi wrote a
poem describing a poet meeting the same features of Ko Un sexually assaulting a
young woman. Following the accusations of this poem several young female
writers shared allegations and accusations of Ko Un participating in sexual
misconduct against young woman, often coercing them into sex. Subsequently Ko
Un’s poems were removed from school textbooks, and his lawsuit against Choi
Young-mi was dismissed. After recuperating from their own sexual assault
scandal, it will be questionable whether or not the Swedish Academy will wish
to award a writer who currently faces accusations and allegations being aimed
towards them.
Australia &
Oceania –
Gerald Murnane – Australia – Gerald Murnane’s name
is spoken in hushed whispers, among many. He’s a dark horse and a cult figure,
known for his sparse bibliography, his eccentric qualities, and his
uncompromising works. Murnane is often described as the quintessential
Australian writer, as he has never left the country, and rarely explores his
own, which is quite contrary to many Australian concepts, as they are known as
cosmopolitan travelers, before returning home to settle down. Not Murnane, he’s
a homebody, who has found his place on the earth, and quietly rests there. When
his work has been released, its quietly reviewed, praised vehemently, but the
praise does not fly far—despite often referring to the author and his work as
genius and masterpieces. His work is noted for being paradoxical and contrary,
nonchalantly refusing to fit into any concrete idea of what it should be or
what it represents. For example, on one hand, Gerald Murnane’s work is
described as plain, matter of fact, on the borders of being frosty in spirit,
before the reverse is annunciated; that Murnane’s work is intricately lyrical
to the point it was moving, in its continual distortion of personal realities,
based on a individual’s sight, rather than the preconceived notions of reality.
His work is often described as fitting into the notion of realism at one point,
then paddling back re-state the argument that it’s anti-realism, with many
postmodernist tropes. The truth is: Gerald Murnane rejects literary tropes and
fashions, and instead writes the most unique stories and short novels, in prose
which shifts from extreme to extreme, in realistic but dreamlike prose, which
always relies on the individual’s perceptions of the world. It is truly no
wonder, why he is considered a cult favourite, a dark horse, and a genius on
the borderlands of the conventional. With the Nobel Banquet now cancelled, and
safe to presume al ceremonial activities, lectures, and other conventional
events related to the Nobel Prize cancelled; it would be perfect for Gerald
Murnane to receive the prize. After all he’s not much of a traveler.
Patricia
Grace – New Zealand – Reconciliation of colonialism is becoming a more potent
movement within the world, especially for postcolonial nations whose indigenous
populations are demanding recognition, apologies, and reconciliatory action
regarding the mistreatment, abuse, and otherwise cultural genocide which took
place during colonial rule. This has been made explicatory clear in Canada as
of late, as unmarked graves have been discovered at the sites of former
residential schools filled with children. Patricia Grave is one of the most
prominent voices at work in New Zealand literature, and who brought the Māori
perspective to the literary stage. The advocacy of bringing new perspectives or
more native perspectives to literature have an exemplary cause of Patricia
Grace who early on recognized that when children read books that mirrored or
reflected them or their circumstances and identity, they were often more
engaged with the work, and saw themselves as not just sidestepped or
uninteresting characters in someone else’s story, but worthy and memorable
protagonists. Patricia Grace has been one of those exceptional writers who
embodies both culture and values without maintaining or holding resentment or
viciously pontificating against the former established institution. Instead,
Grace writes with the sole intention of telling the stories, lives, and
experiences from the Māori perspective, and highlights their culture and
history. In 2008 Patricia Grace was nominated and won the Neustadt Prize, which
only cements the importance and acknowledgement that Patricia Grace is a
worldly author who brings a holistic approach to literature as it seeks to
identity and include all cultures and peoples within the literary canon, while
refuting any high-handed moral superiority attitude in its delivery.
South
America & Latin America; with the Caribbean –
Tomás
González – Columbia – There can be no denying that Columbian literature has
been eclipsed and overshadowed by the late Gabriel García Márquez, who pushed
South & Latin America to the forefront with magical realism, and suddenly
the enter Western literary world is reviewing the southern continent under a
glaring fascination of exoticism, complete with formal experimentation, and
allegorical labyrinths of narratives. The post-boom writers have moved away
from these forebearers, preferring less allegorical premises in which to
meditate and contemplate their subjects. The post-boom writers and the more
dissenting voices were openly critical of the Boom Generation for being elitist
in their perspective, and pandering to the western tradition and readers, while
neglecting the readership of their own countries. The new generation which
found its most prominent voice in Roberto Bolaño moved away from the
fantastical allegory of the previous generation and sought shape and craft
narratives that the everyday reader would be able to understand, and characters
they could empathize with. One of these post-boom writers is the Colombian
writer Tomás González, who is only now just beginning to gain a foothold I the
English language. One of Tomás González’s novels is the multifaceted
psychological portrait: “The Storm,” which is a hallmark of the authors style,
showcasing his ability encapsulate an entire history and world within a single
microcosm of psychological processing that is not bound or confined by the
rules of time or space. The novel recounts through twenty-six hours, the ordeal
of a family, their personal histories, their trials and tribulations, their
petty competitions, their slips into sanity. The novel echoes with the chorus
of a Greek tragedy played out within the ethereal realm of the psychologically
fractured and distressing. Tomás González is a writer of quiet masterpieces, of
fiction that is both compelling and beautiful and is now beginning to be
consumed and appreciated in the English language. There is no doubt that Tomás
González has been one of the best kept literary secrets of the Southern
Hemisphere.
Elena Poniatowska – México – Elena
Poniatowska is often lumped together with the greatest writers of the 20th
Century of the Southern Hemisphere, with the likes of Nobel Laureates: Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Octavio Paz, along with Carlos Fuentes, Sergio
Pitol, and Fernando del Paso. Some of these writers were directly involved with
the Latin American Boom (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos
Fuentes) Elena Poniatowska would not be considered a subscriber or acolyte in
the same fashion as Isabel Allende. No, Poniatowska is a journalist first with
a strong streak in political, social, and cultural criticism. This continued
interest in the disenfranchised of Mexican society, the otherwise poor,
impoverished, uneducated or of limited social standing, are continually in her
focus with righteous pen in hand. She is most famous for her reportage and
collage non-fiction work: “Massacre in Mexico,” which recounts through
reportage, testimony, and witnessed events the horrors that took place at Plaza
de las Tres Culturas, where unarmed civilians demonstrated and protested the
hosting of the 1968 Olympics being hosted in Mexico City. The demonstrators
themselves wanted to call attention to the inequality and impoverishment of the
city. The military inevitably opened fire killed an undetermined number of
people. This became known as the Tlatelolco Massacre. There is always an ironic
twist with advocates who voice their discontent and unleash criticism against
the inequalities prevalent in society or seek to raise the position of the
lower social classes, when in fact these advocates herald from exceptionally
privileged backgrounds. Elena Poniatowska is no different. Poniatowska was born
in Paris, France to a fortunate family. Her father was Prince Jean Joseph
Evremond Sperry Poniatowski; thus, making Elena Poniatowska a princess, where
she is often referred to as the ‘Rouge Princess,’ where she disregarded any
notion of aristocratic behavior expected of her, concerning herself with the
blight and issues of the common people. Poniatowska’s initial career in
journalism was not noted remarkable, or even remotely concerned with the issues
she viewed with strength and vigor. No instead, Elena Poniatowska was to
oversee and write the lifestyle and society column, which she did with satire
and facetious disingenuity. Then came
“Massacre in Mexico,” and Elena Poniatowska was finally taken seriously as both
a journalist and commentator on sociopolitical affairs. It is in this regard
that one can assess that Elena Poniatowska is not a ‘purely,’ literary writer,
one who does not explicitly dedicate themselves to either poetry or prose, and
just makes their living from journalism. No, Poniatowska maintained an
otherwise pragmatic perspective when it came to writing, believing that all
written work must have a purpose, or provide insight into palpable affairs.
This apparently made the late Carlos Fuentes comment: “Look at poor little
Poni! There she goes in her beat-up VW Bug, on her way to interview the head of
the slaughterhouse.” – Despite not being a strictly literary writer, Elena
Poniatowska received the Cervantes Prize in 2013, and is considered an
important writer within the Spanish language, whose social and political
commentary and criticism is respected. I do wonder her chances of receiving the
Nobel Prize for Literature, after Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 2015, who is regarded as a journalist and historian, who has
traced the social and political destinies of the Soviet and Post-Soviet
individual. Regardless, Elena Poniatowska’s commitment to reporting, recording,
documenting, and disseminating the events, attitudes, perspectives, and
atrocities that take place around her are admirable, as they become the
accounts and chronicles for future generations. They will provide that palpable
perspective that statistical evidence cannot convey.
Raúl
Zurita – Chile – Chilean poetry is a highbrow form, which is appreciated and
respected by the reading public of Chile. Great Chilean poets include Gabriela
Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Nicanor Parra are always considered the finest
stock, along with Raúl Zurita, who remains the nations greatest poetic voice. Raúl
Zurita’s early poetic influences were unfortunately shaped by political
context. At the age of 22 and during the early onslaught of Pinochet’s gaining
control, Zurita was detained among thousands of others, where he was tortured.
This proved to a traumatizing experience for the poet, who for years afterwards
would be haunted by the situation, as it inflected every aspect of his life, and
would be the basis of his monumental poetic trilogy which protested and defied
the dictatorship. The poetry of Raúl Zurita is pulling oneself out of the
abyss; struggling from the depths of madness to reclaim language, speech, to
communicate once again with someone, anyone about the situation at hand, and so
was his debut poetry collection: “Purgatory,” a reclaiming of language in a
world gone mad. The subsequent collections of Zurita’s poetry: “Anteparadise,”
and “La Vida nueva,” complete his trilogy, which became a cacophonous collage
of competing and inconsequential forms that at first glance appear to have no
shared meaning or theme, but slowly the images, the concerns, the situations,
and the poems align in constellation like format, creating through individual
stars a poetic collage that provides not only an overview of the dictatorship
of Pinochet’s dictatorship, but also the unyielding resistance, life, and love
that existed within such terrible times. Regardless of the terrors, horrors,
and atrocities taking place during the dictatorship Zurita’s poetry sought to
speak, give voice, and resound language in a vibrant kaleidoscope of speech to
provide a reflection of life lived in a dichotomous and cacophonous chorus of
joy and suffering. After the fall of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Raúl Zurita has
continued to publish further poetry, which have become world renowned, not just
for their experimentation and characteristically unique perspective that is Zurita,
one that is plural and universal, while maintaining the reminder that it
channels through the singular mind, hand, and pen that is the poet.
Nancy
Morejón – Cuba – Often called one of the most prominent poets of
Post-Revolution Cuba, and the most translated female poet from Cuba, certainly
does not hurt Nancy Morejón’s reputation on the global literary stage. Morejón
is considered the first professional Cuban writer with African ancestry. Her
poetry focuses on issues of ethnicity, gender; the individuals relation to
history; politics, and the Afro-Cuban identity; which are all displayed in her
colourful and vibrant poetic compositions that blend Spanish and African cultural
traditions, and ponder questions of these two unique traditions, and what it
means to be a product of both. Though Nancy Morejón celebrates and writes of
‘blackness,’ in all its beauty, experiences, and rich cultural traditions,
there is a resistant refusal to subscribe struggle or adversity within a
singular parameter. Ethnicity, history, and politics are themes within Morejón’s
poetry and will became entangled with each other, they take on intimate notions
such as family situations or scenes, or ancestral explorations of the past.
This can be observed as one explores the notion of slavery, its relation to the
present, and the effects on the individual as they relate to society, their
family, and history. Nancy Morejón’s poetry is noted for its lyricism, slight
mystical tones, erotic fasciation’s, and intimate spiritual nature. As a poet,
Nancy Morejón views poetry as a form of social communication and eschews all
attempts at hermeticism or closed off language preferences. The goal remains
the same, to communicate beyond geography, language, and gender with others, on
an experience, a thought, an emotion, a moment, all expressed through the
unique narratives of her poetry.
Rodrigo Rey Rosa – Guatemala – Rodrigo Rey Rosa –
Guatemala – Rodrigo Rey Rosa is a profoundly humanistic author, whose styles of
writing can be described as both diverse and digressive. Rosa can be both fluid
and fragmentary; eschewing national identity in favour of a more global reach;
coupled with a mosaic prose writing that documents and exemplifies his vagabond
and transitionary existence. His travels have taken him throughout Central
America and Mexico, as well as sojourns in North Africa—specifically Morocco,
where the tutelage of friend and mentor, Paul Bowles, proved to be a major
influence on his writing, intercepted with his own heritage, experiences, and
preoccupations. His most recent translated work into English “Human Matter,”
has been described as frustratingly fragmented, defying any traditional notion
of proper classification within the literary scope. It has been described as a
collection of notebooks, investigations, and a recorded exploration of
humanity, memory, integrity, and cruelty. It’s too fictious to be defined as
non-fiction; yet, to discursive for many to call it a novel. All the same,
“Human Matter,” is defined and marketed as a novel. It’s been praised as a
treatise exemplifying human dignity, integrity, as well as collective identity,
but in the family sequence, but also on a national level. Throughout his
erudite and colourful career, Rodrigo Rey Rosa gained praise, support, and
acknowledgement from others. The late Roberto Bolaño praised Rodrigo Rey Rosa
as being one of the best writers of his generation. In fashion similar Bolaño,
and other post-Boom writers, Rodrigo Rey Rosa employees more postmodernist
techniques and perspectives in his literary output. His work carries the
influence of myth and folktales of Guatemala but takes a more global attitude
in preoccupation. Unlike the predecessors of the Latin American Boom
Generation, Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s concern is not necessarily limited to the
mystical, exotic, and magical lands of South and Central America, but instead
pushes the otherwise southern land to the forefront of the global literary
stage, providing a unique dialogue not hindered by national identity or
provincial concerns.
Adélia
Prado – Brazil – Adélia Prado – Brazil – Adélia Prado is one of Brazils most
renowned, and beloved contemporary poets. Her poetry was first discovered when
she was on the cusp of middle age, when she decided to relinquish a few poems
to a poet, essayist, and scholar, who in turn passed these poems on to the
Brazilian modernist master, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, who quickly heaped
praise on this otherwise startling and unknown voice, writing from the
interstate of Brazil, away from the high urban, cultural, and cosmopolitan
centres of the time. Adélia Prado’s poetry was noted immediately, as being
independent, unique and striking, as it never fell into the fashionable
preoccupations of the time. Rather, Prado’s poetic perspective was one of the
everyday: the physical (carnal and erotic), as well as the spiritual and
religious, and that of the perspective of being a woman. Adelia Prado is a
devote practicing catholic, which carries the aris of solemn conservative
stiffness, with little enjoyment, and an exacting sense of self-flagellation in
order to bring on sufficient suffering for penance and repentance in order to
gain a more intimate and masochistic relationship with a holier being; Prado’s
poetry eschews this image abruptly, by displaying erotic details that become
both shock and contrary to faith. She defends this practice by stating the
poetry is not the eroticism of the flesh, but the intimacy of soul. Her themes
move beyond just the theological eroticism of spiritual and soulfulness, as it
also recounts the details of the lives of women of Brazil, their concerns and
their preoccupations, which through her poetry is never just ordinary.
According to the poet, it is the workings of the devil, which provides the
illusion that the everyday is somehow deprived of any extraordinary details, or
a sense of the bewilderment, as she relentlessly persists there is poetic
enjoyment and beauty within the world of the everyday, and its ubiquitous
charm. It is in the simple acts of life, and those brief moments of reflection
that the metaphysical, divine, and transcendental reality is revealed. Seven
years ago, Adélia Prado was the recipient of the Griffin Lifetime Recognition
Award, an hour she shares with poets:
Adam Zagajewski, Ana Blandiana, and the late (Nobel Laureate) Derek
Walcott, which only cements the international recognition, and appeal that
Adélia Prado is in possession of.
Carmen Boullosa – Mexico – Boullosa is one of
Mexico’s leading contemporary writers, who has worked in a variety of different
literary formats, which includes novels, short stories, poetry, plays, as well
as a foray into screenwriting. Arguably, Boullosa is most famous for her
novels, which are consciously written in a different format, style, and
thematic form then the others. This conscious desire to write each new novel in
a new format, style, and thematic occupations, is the hallmark Carmen
Boullosa’s literary personality, and overarching literary style. Her novels
vary between historical fiction and magical realism. Her satirical trilogy of
plays uses similar devices as they deploy historical settings and a inclination
for the fantastic, to satirize the traditional perspective gender norms, and
woman’s oppression in the patriarchal society framework. Feminist issues within
the Latin American context, which has made her one of the leading female voices
of contemporary Mexican Literature, who has been praised by the late Carlos
Fuentes, and Roberto Bolaño.
Cesar
Aira – Argentina – Cesar Aira is a prolific and industrious writer, producing
two to four novellas a year. Aira is known for being a practitioner of a unique
writing style and technique, which he refers to as: ‘Flight Forward,’ where he
bypasses edits and revisions, and begins to change the direction of his
novella, when he views the work is headed towards a literary or stylistic traps
or dangers. This ‘flight forward,’ technique has often be compared to
theatrical improvisation, where the writes improvises or changes style or
literary genre to best serve the work. Aira’s often avant-garde perspective has
gathered praise and criticism. On one hand critics applauded the writer’s
unique blend of contrary and shifting perspectives to offer a truly unusual
viewpoint of the world, with surreal and humorous manners. On the other hand,
detractors have criticized this style as being nothing more than postmodernist
gimmick or party trick which the author parades as a literary aesthetic but is
nothing more than a continual rehash of the same old joke, where he
nonchalantly wears the hat of Dadaism; the coat of surrealism; the tie of
fantastic; and the shoes of quasi-nonsensical. Criticism often points at the
authors reliance on his style, often removes attention from his depth and
themes, which many argue are severely underdeveloped in favour of his stylistic
forays. Regardless of either criticism or praise, Cesar Airia is perhaps one of
the most important literary writers in the Spanish language; one that has moved
from the Latin Boom Generation, and facilitated a multitude of genres,
perspectives, and themes with every novella written, produced, and published.
Circe Maia – Uruguay – Circe Maia is a literary
national treasure of Uruguay; despite living through the political upheavals
which have gripped the country. These same political upheavals have infiltrated
her home, and often came close to destroying her personal life. Her husband was
arrested for his political involvements, and Circe Maia was only spared a
similar fate, simply because she was pregnant with her youngest daughter at the
time. The dictatorship of Uruguay and personal tragedies had once silenced Maia
as a poet—but not out of grief or fear, but more out of protest. Now, she is a
renowned and respected contemporary poet. Her poetry is noted for being direct
and somber. She refuses to slip into the self-absorbed poetic monologue or fill
the airs of a narcissistic poet. Circe Maia writes with clear conviction, to
write her poetry in a way in which as a poet and as a reader, there is a
conversation in which there is a mutual unearthing of what it means to be human
and to live, all become thoughts and questions about the human condition and
its universal and personal destiny. Circe Maia has battled against her poetry
becoming self-contained and hermetic; rather her poetry is lively, direct,
approachable and conversational in form and function, it is the poetry of daily
life, the poetry heard and seen through the comment mundane events, reflected
in objects and events; it is a poetry of a life lived and experienced, rather
than one theorized and mythologized.
Luisa Valenzuela – Argentina – Heralding from a
literary family and background, it comes as no surprise that Luisa Valenzuela
became a writer. Throughout her childhood home, writers frequently visited her
family; her mother, Luisa Mercedes Levinson hosted many social and literary
gatherings attended by the Argentinean literati, including Jorge Luis Borges,
who composed a story with Levinson. Initially interested in the natural
sciences, Valenzuela turned towards writing in her late adolescences, and
embarked on a literary and journalistic career from there. Valenzuela’s
literary career and bibliography spans over thirty published works, in a
multiple of different forms including: novels, short stories, flash fiction,
and essays, which coincide with her journalistic work as well, and teaching and
lecturing engagements. Despite her privileged background, Luisa Valenzuela was
not immune to the political turmoil and social upheaval of Argentina during the
seventies; as the military junta came into place, intellectuals, and writers
were feared as enemies of political power and certainty and were quickly
censored and removed from their positions into others, in order to ensure they
could not touch or engage with others and provoke freedom of thought, or political
revolution. Luisa Valenzuela often tackled themes of political oppression, and
women’s oppression at the hands of authoritarian governments. Valenzuela’s use
of language is also a remarked as being highly refined, along with her
engagements in political and social interests. Language becomes malleable form
for the author, subjected to her authority and providing new perspective,
description, and recollection of events and themes with ease. Despite writing and publishing around the
same time as Latin American Boom writers, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario
Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes; Luisa Valenzuela, is described as one of the
earliest and most profound post-Boom writers. Regardless, she is a
world-renowned writer, who has been instrumental in paving the way for other
writers of the Southern Continent to have their voices heard and appreciated on
the literary stage.
Frankétienne – Hati – Frankétienne has been regarded
as Hati’s: Father of Letters—a wizened man of literature, wordplay, and
humanistic intellectual pursuits. For this, he has often been speculated and
tipped as a winner for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Frankétienne’s literary
work is known for its unusual use of language in the form of neologisms; but also,
for his ill-mannered depictions of vulgar sexual encounters, and brutal
violence, which are common occurrences in Haiti even today. Even though Papa
Doc and Baby Doc are dead, there has been little progress or change in Haiti’s
political system or central control of power within the country. Haiti has been
described as an unfortunate orphan of fate and change; a politically mismanaged
wretch; and a depressingly third world country, which is better left ignored
then acknowledged. For Frankétienne, this all must be brutally depicted,
voiced, and protested. Frankétienne’s work is noted for its mystical
atmosphere, and it’s almost voodoo folkloric roots. If Wole Soyinka was a
writer influenced by the Yoruba people’s myths and folklores, in which he found
a way to embody in his literary identity; Frankétienne’s violent and mystical
heritage (found in his paintings, poetry and prose) stems from the Hattian
voodoo traditions of Haiti and its alluringly dark intrigue, which enchants the
Caribbean in warmth and ecstasy.
Ana María Shua – Argentina – The Southern Continent
is an extraordinary continent filled with literary talent, which is only now
beginning appreciated across the globe. For decades though, the South and Latin
American literary culture was dominated by what was known as the Latin American
Boom Generation. There were of course other writers who wrote independently
from the Boom Generation, they’re risked being overlooked for not participating
in the otherwise more dominate culture or literary group. Ana María Shua (much
like Luisa Valenzuela) worked independently from the Boom Generation. In a
similar fashion as Valenzuela, during the Argentinean military junta, Shua was
forced into exile; there in France, she worked as a journalist. After the
dictatorship fell, Ana Maria Shua returned to Argentina that her literary
career began to take hold and take off, when she published her first novel.
Since then, Ana Maria SHua has published over eighty books in a variety of
forms including, novels, short stories, flash, fiction, poetry, drama, essays
and children’s literature, while also being anthologist of Jewish folklore and
writing books of humour. The micro story (flash fiction) is what Anna Maria
Shua is most known for, often called the ‘Queen of the Microstory,’ both in
South America and in Europe.
Cristina Peri Rossi – Uruguay –Throughout this
section of this Nobel Prize for Literature Speculation List, the Latin American
Boom is referenced with a few writers, Cristina Peri Rossi will be the last
writer to have a reference attached to the previous Boom authors. Where others
are merely associated as being post-Boom or being admired or praised by members
of the Boom Generation, Cristina Peri Rossi, appears to be the only one listed
who had a partial association with them. Arguably Cristina Peri Rossi, is also
the only woman writer who was associated with the Boom Generation as well.
Throughout her association, she was actively involved in championing the causes
of the generation during the 60’s and 70’s, as well as forced into exile twice;
she also was a dear friend of the late Julio Cortazar. Despite her relation to
these writers, she was only partially associated, mainly due to her own desire
to maintain a distance from the formalities of being categorized as one of them.
Rossi is an independent writer, who sought to retain that independence free
from literary associations; while others may argue that her gender played a key
role in the lack of formal induction. Regardless, the Uruguayan writer is one
of the most accomplished, beloved, and renowned writers of South American
literature. Her work is comprised of both novels, short stories, poems, as well
as essays, journalism, and political commentary. Throughout her bibliography, Cristina
Peri Rossi has maintained common themes throughout her work, which include
political and social injustices; love and passion; sexuality, feminism, and
issues relating to gender.
In the End:
Closing Thoughts –
There you have it Gentle Reader, my Nobel
Speculation List for 2021.
Following are some statistics and data of this
year’s list:
94 writers are included on this year’s speculation
list.
40 writers are female.
54 writers are male.
Of these 94 writers, 16 are new (so yes, the list
does change). These new writers are separated by the following geographical
areas:
North Africa, Central Asia, & the Middle East –
4
Europe – 6
Australia & Oceania – 1
Asia & the Indo-Subcontinent – 3
South America & Latin America, with the
Caribbean – 2
I make it a specific goal and unapologetic bias to
not include writers from English speaking nations, or whose literary language
is English. In the past, to main diversity I included one writer from
Australia, the usual dark horse, Gerald Murnane. This year, however, I decided
to include a writer from New Zealand. Adcock’s poetry is approachable and
conversational in tone, and whose topics take account of daily activities,
observations, and examinations of the human condition through these events, complete
with a sly sense of humor that is both dry and wry in their ironic touches. Despite
reading a couple of Fleur Adcock’s poems, and further research into the poet,
showed that Fleur Adcock was practically genteel and anglicized. She had lived
in the United Kingdom since the 60’s – escaping a sadistic marriage with a beast
of a man Barry Crump, whose bushwhacking novels were all the rage in New
Zealand – where the poet has written and translated and has found the United
Kingdom to be more like home then her native New Zealand. Despite Fleur Adcock
not making onto this year’s lists, she’s still a marvelous poet and I am glad
to have had the opportunity to have treated myself to the poems that I was able
to read.
In lieu of Fleur Adcock, I read about the Māori
writer Patricia Grace. Recently indigenous populations of former colonized
countries have achieved traction in their demands for reconciliations and acknowledgement
of the crimes penetrated against them during colonial rule. A reclamation of
culture, starve off linguistic extinction, and ensure the cultural endowment of
customs and traditions. Patricia Grace has won numerous literary words, the
most famous being the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2008. Her
literary oeuvre is important for the preservation of the Māori culture in a
literary sphere and propagating the Māori experience onto a more global stage. Though
these otherwise topical or externally political motived concerns should not detract
away from Patricia Grace’s literary work which transcends the otherwise
dampening political perspectives.
Beyond Gerald Murnane and Patricia Grace writing in
English, two other writers also write in English have been included on this list:
Ranjit Hoskote and Amitav Ghosh. The Indian sub-continent has a diversity of linguistic
languages that vary from region to region. The English language is still a predominate
language within the country along with Hindi. Not surprisingly, English language
Indian writers will have greater representation on the global literary stage.
This includes of course, Amitav Ghosh who has been warmly received within the
English language; while Ranjit Hoskote is an accomplished poet, whose themes move
beyond paltry concerns of linguistic or regional preoccupations. Instead, Ranjit
Hoskote remains immediately concerned with universal crises and problems that
will impact all human beings. Of course, beyond being concerned with the
destiny and fate of society and humanity, Ranjit Hoskote is a remarkable poet
in his own right, shifting between forms and styles with chameleonic grace. As
for Amitav Ghosh there is no denying his work maintains a truly historically
epic scope, provide a thorough dissection of the events which have shaped the
world to its present state. Amitav Ghosh’s eye for historical accuracy and
luxurious prose makes one of the finest writers currently at work in the
English language, though relatively underappreciated overall, that is if the
Booker Prize is considered the crowning achievement of English language literary
appreciation. In the case of Ranjit Hoskote and Amitav Ghosh I overlooked my
disregard of English language writers and included them as I do not believe these
writers are featured often in other Nobel Speculation lists or discussions, and
certainly have not appeared on any of the betting sites.
For now, though Gentle Reader, we can expect the
Nobel Prize for Literature to be announced on October 7th, 2021. Here’s
hoping this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature marks a stark contrast to the
previous years and goes to an unknown writer. Currently it seems the Nobel
Prize for Literature bounces back between the United States of America and
Europe, with some detours to other literary cultures from time to time. This
year it would be nice for the Nobel Prize for Literature to go to a unknown
writer who is not named in the usual canon who is viewed as the possible winner.
A complete surprise would be greatly appreciated. I truly believe that without
the Nobel Prize for Literature, I would not have read Herta Müller or Patrick
Modiano or JMG Le Clezio. Yet, after 2014 the Nobel Prize for Literature has
remained relatively the same, awarding writers who have either be in speculative
consideration for years, or settling on writers who appear to be mediocre or comprisable
or in another infamous year, not a writer at all. Though when Olga Tokarczuk won for 2018
(awarded in 2019), it was truly a heartwarming and pleasant award, though it
was often eclipsed by the controversy surrounding Peter Handke, who in being
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2019, the Swedish Academy proved or reaffirmed
that they are either tone deaf to criticism, or unapologetically maverick institution
that is does not shy away from controversy, but openly welcomes it.
Until October 7th, Gentle Reader, when we
learn who this year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature will be.
