Like most readers I pay attention to and like awards because they point the way to writers and books I might not meet otherwise. At the same time I make sure I treat the awards, not the winners, with a bit of levity. To honor our recent winner, let me quote from one of his essays from 2001 about literature. “ Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men and women of all nations and places are essentially equal.” In my book, he deserved the Nobel Prize in literature for that one sentence alone!
For those that like trivia:
~ Since the Nobel Prizes were instituted, 106 individuals have won the Nobel Prize in Literature on 102 occasions. It was shared four times.
~ The youngest Literature Laureate is Rudyard Kipling, best known for The Jungle Book, who was 42 years old when he was awarded the Literature Prize in 1907.
~ The oldest Laureate till date is Doris Lessing, who was 88 when she was awarded the Prize in 2007.
~Twelve women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf being the first in 1909.
~ Two people have declined the Nobel Prize in Literature. Boris Pasternak (1958) “Accepted first, later caused by the authorities of his country (Soviet Union) to decline the Prize”. Jean Paul Sartre (1964) declined the prize because he had consistently declined all official honors.
~ A few writers that did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature
Anton Chekhov *
Bertolt Brecht *
Emile Zola
Henrik Ibsen *
Herbert Spencer *
HG Wells *
James Joyce
Jorge Luis Borges
Joseph Conrad *
Leo Tolstoy *
Marcel Proust *
Mark Twain *
Maxim Gorki *
