It would be a shame for this blog, the purpose of which is for to discuss and review books by Nobel Prize Laureates, if it did not do something prior the announcement of this year's Prize, which happens tomorrow. So having a bit of time I've decided to go through the infamous Ladbrokes' betting list surmising four candidates biographies and maybe a snatchet of their writing style. It is not necessarily an accurate mark of the Academy's choosing process, and it shouldn't be reflected as such, but it gives me a starting off point to make comment on the various writers involved. I won't be predicting, the predictions I made last year still stand, but merely giving you a flavour of who is in the running for the Prize. I'll look at the first four, candidates on the list Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Haruki Murakami, Svetlana Aleksijevitj and Joyce Carol Oates; starting with Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.
Ngugi was born in Kenya, where he has a troubled history, writing a play, The Black Hermit, before moving to England and writing the first novel in English from a writer from West Africa. His early style was realistic but it has changed to more magical realism, the thing that makes him consistent is his interest in colonisation. He was imprisoned for writing the play I Will Marry When I Want where he then wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, a Kenyan language, called The Devil On The Cross while in solitary confinement on prision issue toilet paper. He now writes only in Gikuyu encouraging other African writers to write in their own languages rather than European ones. Political and humorous he shows he has the strength of character that could make him a Nobel Prize Winner.
Haruki Murakami is back on the list, even after I have dealt with him last year (http://whatihavegottenupto-thebookspy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/why-murakmai-wont-win-nobel-prize.html) he comes back. I won't talk about why people think he should win but I'll say a little about his background. Running a jazz club in Tokyo his mind was far from being dedicated to writing. He was watching a baseball game when the idea, apropos of nothing, formed that he could write a novel. So he got to it, wrote it and won first Prize in a literary competition. Soon he gave up running his bar, much to the amazement and concern of his friends, in order to write full time. Maybe it is this fact that makes me hope that he doesn't win: sheer jealously. Influenced heavily by Western writers he has a magical quirk of telling melancholic tales in a post-modern vein. He has written The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Kafka On The Shore, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, and most recently Colourless Tazukuru Tazaki.and His Years of Pilgrimage.
Svetlana Aleksijevitj was born in the Ukraine and has written about the Chernobyl disaster in her book Voices From Chernobyl as well as about the Afganistan war, Boys of Zinc, and World War II, The Unwomanly Face of the War and Last Witness: the Book of Unchildlike Stories. Her technique of 'mixing eloquence and wordlessness' conveys the rawness of a world reduced of humanity, in a dangerous atmosphere with political and media silence over important events. She, like Ngugi, has been persecuted as well as prolific giving her the mettle of a Nobel Prize Winning candidate.
Joyce Carol Oates was born in New York publishing her first book, With Shuddering Fall, when she was twenty-six and has gone on to write A Garden of Earthly Delights, them and Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart. I could write a whole post just by listing the titles she has written as she writes, and wins an award, every year since 1967. Clearly she is formidable in terms of production and she seems to have a very sharp, tough edge to her, giving her fiction more than a bit of bite (one of her novellas is entitled Rape: a love story). A very strong candidate.
Now that I have written about these incredible writers it makes me want to be more adventurous with my reading, which is really the only real effect the Prize should have on the public. But maybe you disagree, if so, write in the comments below.
Oh and to those who have put bets on for Bob Dylan to win the Prize, well, good luck to you- if someone re-defines Alfred Nobel's will in the next day then maybe he'll have a chance.
Sources Used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3644603/A-conspiracy-of-ignorance-and-obedience.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oates
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