To follow up from my post on the Booker & Pulitzer Fiction Prize winners, I have decided to do a similar discussion post, but this time focusing on the Nobel Laureates for Literature, providing below my stats and winner preferences (I read roughly 42 Nobel winners out of some 119). The Nobel Committee has at times been accused of being political in its nominations and awards, and it is also important to bear in mind that such renowned authors as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov never, as preposterously as it may sound, actually won this prize. Nevertheless, I applaud the recent trend to recognise the achievements of women in literature (as Olga Tokarczuk and Annie Ernaux were awarded the prize in 2018 and 2022 respectively).
Nobel laureates:
who are my FAVORITE authors:
Thomas Mann, 1929:
“principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature”.
José Saramago, 1997:
“who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality“.
Orhan Pamuk, 2006:
“who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”.
Albert Camus, 1957:
“for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times“.
Kenzaburō Ōe, 1994:
“who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today“.
Thoughts on Papyrus 