A year after the Swedish Academy shocked the world with its choice of Bob Dylan as the Nobel laureate for literature, the jury is preparing to unveil this year’s winner of the prestigious honour.
The academy, an assembly of 18 Swedes who are elected by secret ballot to their roles and hold them for life, has revealed that the Nobel laureate in literature will be announced on 5 October. More than half of the academy’s members must vote for the eventual winner, who is chosen from about 350 proposals made by literary experts and former Nobel laureates from around the world. Intended to honour Alfred Nobel’s desire to reward “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, the SEK9m (£832,000) award has gone to 113 writers since 1901 – of whom 14 were women, 28 wrote in English and 77 wrote in prose.
This year, despite betting firm Unibet offering odds on everyone from George RR Martin to Kanye West to take the award, the academy is expected to plump for a safer choice. At Ladbrokes, which found last year that 91% of the time, the eventual laureate had odds of 10/1 or less when betting was suspended, the field was topped by perennial contenders, Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, at 4/1, and Japan’s Haruki Murakami, at 5/1. The last black writer to win the Nobel was the American novelist Toni Morrison in 1993, and the last black winner from Africa was Wole Soyinka in 1986.
But if Thiong’o wins that will be unfair. Kenya has 43 tribes, and Wangari has already won from Mt Kenya. Kwani Kenya ni ya kabila moja pekee, seriously?
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Dear @admin,
I have mentioned you to report the massacre of yet another thread. I also suggest we suggest @FieldMarshal CouchP for consideration in the Nobel Prize for Literature. This comment should be introduced to the syllabus
You are too negative. Loosen up! What is it? Bad time of the month or the water broke? There are doctors who handle that kind of thing, one of my pigs had that same problem some days ago.
The reason why Ngûgi misses out year in year out is the same Chinua missed out, language. Being well versed in English language, the two rebelled against the English hegemony in anglophone Africa. Though Achebe was said to have built English his lack of fidelity to the grammar and semantics “disgusted” the hegemonists. Ngûgi’s (and others) push for the study of oral literature and African litt, a fight against James Stewart the head of english dpt, that led to the separation of litt from english. His subsequent choice of gîkuyu as his language of the pen also put him in wrong books with the canonists. Soyinka on the other hand received a nobel for his fidelity to high English. Hopefully the ideology has changed and the nobel group may think differently this time
I tend to believe Taban Mokotiyang Rekenet lo Liyong’s opinion that kenya is a literary desert.
I never found thiong’os writing influential enough compared to other African writings which are much shorter. But he’s earned his place in that domain.