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Having topped primarily Westerners in its 120-year existence, the Swedish Academy may award the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday to a author from Asia or Africa, following a pledge to make the celebrated prize extra various.
Literary circles in Stockholm and world wide have been abuzz for weeks with hypothesis about potential winners. The Swedish Academy will put an finish to the guessing recreation at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) when it pronounces the 2021 laureate.
The 18 Academy members are identified for cloak-and-dagger strategies worthy of a spy novel to keep away from making a gift of any clues, utilizing code names for authors and faux guide covers to hide what they’re studying.
However regardless of all their efforts, the profile of the everyday literature laureate has been fairly simple to guess: male, from a Western nation typically in Europe, often pretty obscure, and who writes in or has been translated right into a language that may be learn by the Academy.
Of the 117 literature laureates for the reason that first Nobel was awarded in 1901, 95 — or greater than 80 p.c — have been Europeans or North Individuals. France alone has received 15 occasions, greater than every other nation. Obviously, 101 males have received and solely 16 ladies.
The Academy lengthy insisted its laureates had been chosen on literary benefit alone, and that it didn’t take nationality under consideration.
However after a #MeToo scandal that rocked the Academy — prompting it to postpone the 2018 prize for a yr — the physique stated it could regulate its standards in the direction of extra geographic and gender variety.
“Beforehand, we had a extra Eurocentric perspective of literature, and now we’re trying everywhere in the world,” the pinnacle of the Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, stated in 2019.
Spoiled for selection
Since then, the Academy has partially fulfilled its promise.
Two ladies have gotten the nod: Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk clinched the delayed 2018 prize, and little-known American poet Louise Gluck received in 2020.
Sandwiched between them in 2019 was Austrian author Peter Handke — a hotly contested decide as a consequence of his help of Serbia’s former president Slobodan Milosevic, who died whereas on trial for genocide in 2006.
The promise of a broader geographic unfold has, nonetheless, thus far gone unfulfilled. The latest laureate who was neither European nor American was China’s Mo Yan, again in 2012.
Critics have identified the bevy of gifted non-Western writers to select from. Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, India’s Vikram Seth, China’s Yan Lianke and Liao Yiwu, Somalia’s Nuruddin Farah, Mozambique’s Mia Couto and Nigeria’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have all been talked about as Nobel-worthy by consultants questioned by AFP.
However on the finish of the day, “literary benefit” remains to be “absolutely the and the one criterion” for the Academy, Olsson reiterated in an interview with The New Republic printed this week.
It stays to be seen whether or not Japan’s Haruki Murakami and Syria’s Adonis, who’ve been talked about as potential winners for years, stand an opportunity.
Among the many ladies continuously cited to develop into the seventeenth lady laureate are Joyce Carol Oates and Joan Didion of the US, Canada’s Anne Carson, Russia’s Lyudmila Ulitskaya, China’s Can Xue, Maryse Conde and Annie Ernaux of France, and the mysterious Elena Ferrante, a pseudonym.
A ‘woke’ Nobel?
“Is it time for the Nobel Literature Prize to get woke?”, Sweden’s main every day Dagens Nyheter requested this weekend. Or will the Academy proceed down the identical previous path?
“I all the time hope for an enormous shock — that makes the entire thing rather more enjoyable. In the event that they did precisely what we anticipated, the prize would lose its aura,” stated Mats Almegard, literary critic at Fokus journal.
He stated he thought this yr’s prize may go to Romania’s Mircea Cartarescu or France’s Michel Houellebecq, the latter thought-about controversial however of Nobel calibre.
But different critics questioned by AFP predicted Canada’s Margaret Atwood, Hungary’s Peter Nadas and Norway’s Jon Fosse.
The Academy often receives 200 or 300 nominations by late January, that are whittled down to 5 earlier than summer time.
The 5 members of the Academy’s Nobel committee then research the works of these 5 authors, earlier than presenting their option to the complete Academy, which votes on a winner shortly earlier than the October announcement.
Their deliberations are stored secret for 50 years.
The Nobel season continues Friday in Oslo with the Peace Prize, adopted subsequent Monday by the Economics Prize.
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