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The field for this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature is wide open ahead of Thursday’s announcement, with literary circles rowdy over whether the nod will go to another controversial election or will please the public.
Names thrown into speculation include Caribbean-American author Jamaica Kincaid, Canadian poet Anne Carson, Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Hungarian Peter Nadas, and American novelist Thomas Pynchon.
The Swedish Academy’s decision to honor Austrian novelist Peter Handke last year unleashed a flurry of criticism, leaving many wondering how it could crown a writer known for supporting Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the Balkan wars and deny the magnitude. of Serbian terror.
But the 18-member Academy, which defended its choice as based solely on literary merit, is no stranger to controversy.
Her astonishing choice of American rock legend Bob Dylan in 2016 was followed by a rape scandal near her members that erupted in 2017 and ripped the Academy apart, forcing her to postpone the 2018 award, her first in 70 years.
The Academy was revamped and its Nobel committee was required by the Nobel Foundation which administers the prizes to host five outside experts to help vet candidates for the literature prize deliberations in 2019 and 2020.
However, two of the outside experts resigned after last year’s award announcements, lamenting that their views were not being taken into account.
– What would Alfred Nobel say? –
The culture editor of Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, Bjorn Wiman, called Handke’s election “terribly bad”, adding: “If the Academy knows what is good for them, they will choose Jamaica Kincaid” this year.
Writing on issues such as colonialism, racism and gender, “it is worth listening to his position on various moral and political issues today,” he told AFP.
She “is exactly the type of person who takes the award in the idealistic direction that the award’s founder, Alfred Nobel, spoke of” in his will to create the awards, Wiman said.
However, if last year’s election is based on something, the Academy can also “dust off some old candidate” from years ago, “the same way it did with Handke.”
If that were the case, authors like Peter Nadas from Hungary, Ismael Kadare from Albania and Mircea Cartarescu from Romania could get the go-ahead.
Madelaine Levy, a literature critic for Svenska Dagbladet, agreed that Kincaid could be a potential winner, calling her an “incredibly musical writer who is easy to love.”
But an Academy that chose Handke might be more inclined to go with someone like Frenchman Michel Houellebecq, he suggested.
“He is the same type of writer, with a gloomy vision of contemporary Europe and a very negative vision of humanity, where man is a failure … and from that he creates a great literature on the weakness and ugliness of man “.
Levy’s preferred choice would be American author Joan Didion, who “started a kind of social but very politically interested and pop culture-minded essay style that is very lively today.”
– The ‘mysterious ways’ of the Academy –
Canadian poet Anne Carson is seen as a hot lead this year, as are “usual suspects” Joyce Carol Oates and Marilynn Robinson from the United States, David Grossman from Israel, Margaret Atwood from Canada and South Korean poet Ko Un.
Meanwhile, punters are betting on French Guadeloupean writer Maryse Conde, with odds of 5 to 1, just ahead of Russian novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya at 6 to 1 and Japanese Haruki Murakami and Margaret Atwood at 7 to 1, according to site. Ladbrokes betting.
Former editor Svante Weyler said British writer Hilary Mantel, who is rarely mentioned in Nobel Prize circles, could win “for combining extremely sharp intellectual description with public appeal.
“It has not only made the historical novel acceptable, but it has made it the main genre of world literature,” Weyler told AFP.
But the Swedish Academy often avoids best-selling authors, opting to focus its attention on lesser-known names.
“If you’re sitting on all this prize money to give it away, and you’ve got all this attention that you can give, then of course you might think … it’s more fun to give it to someone who’s not in the spotlight yet,” Levy said.
And at the end of the day, he noted, “almost every country has incredibly strong Nobel Prize-worthy writers. The list of writers who are so incredibly good that they live up to the Nobel prizes is long, several hundred I would say. “
“The Academy has surprised everyone many, many times. They work in mysterious ways, “he concluded.
po / jj / gle
© Agence France-Presse
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