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[Mushkilla]

Guessing game ahead of 2014 Nobel literature prize

Stockholm (AFP) - Amid fevered speculation over who gets the Nobel literature prize this year, punters and experts are considering language, geography, genre and even age to try and pin down the winner.
As Stockholm's literary circles try to draw up an "identikit" of the successor of last year's winner, Canadian Alice Munro, several much-cited names were considered to be in the running.

They range from Japan's Haruki Murakami via Adonis from Syria to Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Czech-born Milan Kundera, but no one stands out as a favourite.
"Of course we have some ideas, but they are just speculation," Stockholm-based bookseller Mats Olin told AFP.

The name of this year's laureate will be made public on Thursday,October 9, at 1100 GMT.
In Stockholm or elsewhere, nobody really knows how the Swedish Academy -- which chooses the winner -- comes to its decision
The deliberations take place behind closed doors and are only made public 50 years later.
In order to make a guess, everybody tries to figure out the logic behind the secretive deliberations of the members of the academy.

First, language can be a hint. English-speaking authors have won 27 times, compared to 13 times for French and German-speaking writers each.

Claes Wahlin, a critic at Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, said that it is "really very rare that the academy rewards the same language two years in a row", which might exclude English after Munro's award in 2013.

If the same language is chosen again, he said, "it must be in two parts of the world that are very distant." That would rule out US authors Joyce Carol Oates and Canada's Anne Carson, who are recurring names in speculations.

But then on the other hand, according to Elise Karlsson, critic at Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagblad: "Nothing would be more surprising than choosing two Canadians in a row. And the academy likes surprising."

Geography could matter -


Geography could also be a good criterion.

"It shouldn't take long before Africa is rewarded," publisher Elisabeth Grate said.

African authors have only won four times in the prize's history. The most recent one was South Africa's John M. Coetzee, in 2003.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, from Kenya, is a likely winner, if the award does not go to Somalia's Nuruddin Farah. He is the type of writer the academy likes, according to Wahlin.

read the rest here:
http://news.yahoo.com/guessing-game-ahead-2014-nobel-literature-prize-061642768.html

[water rat]

50 years later

[Dedicated]

Well, it is Patrick Modiano, a French writer who is well known in France but little known in the US. It brings international attention to an author known for his explorations of memory and loss.

[water rat]

A few months ago I compiled a list of all of the Nobel literature laureates. My ambition is to read a bit of every one of the authors. Many of the earlier ones' works have passed into the public domain, but arghh! some 100-year old books are awfully hard to enjoy. Others, from whatever time, just aren't my cup of tea. Some have been my most beloved writers for years. So if anyone would like an easy reference, here is the list. Paste and copy into a search engine as you fancy. Happy reading.

• Sully Prudhomme (1901)
• Theodor Mommsen (1902)
• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903)
• Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray (1904)
• Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905)
• Giosuè Carducci (1906)
• Rudyard Kipling (1907)
• Rudolf Eucken (1908)
• Selma Lagerlöf (1909)
• Paul Heyse (1910)
• Maurice Maeterlinck (1911)
• Gerhart Hauptmann (1912)
• Rabindranath Tagore (1913)
• Romain Rolland(1915)
• Verner von Heidenstam (1916)
• Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan (1917)
• Carl Spitteler (1919)
• Knut Hamsun (1920)
• Anatole France (1921)
• Jacinto Benavente (1922)
• W. B. Yeats (1923)
• Władysław Reymont (1924)
• George Bernard Shaw(1925)
• Grazia Deledda (1926)
• Henri Bergson (1927)
• Sigrid Undset (1928)
• Thomas Mann (1929)
• Sinclair Lewis (1930)
• Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931)
• John Galsworthy (1932)
• Ivan Bunin (1933)
• Luigi Pirandello (1934)
• Eugene O'Neill (1936)
• Roger Martin du Gard (1937)
• Pearl S. Buck (1938)
• Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1939)
• Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944)
• Gabriela Mistral (1945)
• Hermann Hesse (1946)
• André Gide (1947)
• T. S. Eliot (1948)
• William Faulkner (1949)
• Bertrand Russell (1950)
• Pär Lagerkvist (1951)
• François Mauriac (1952)
• Winston Churchill (1953)
• Ernest Hemingway (1954)
• Halldór Laxness (1955)
• Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956)
• Albert Camus (1957)
• Boris Pasternak (1958)
• Salvatore Quasimodo (1959)
• Saint-John Perse(1960)
• Ivo Andrić (1961)
• John Steinbeck (1962)
• Giorgos Seferis (1963)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award) (1964)
• Mikhail Sholokhov (1965)
• Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs (1966)
• Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967)
• Yasunari Kawabata (1968)
• Samuel Beckett (1969)
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)
• Pablo Neruda (1971)
• Heinrich Böll (1972)
• Patrick White (1973)
• Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson (1974)
• Eugenio Montale (1975)
• Saul Bellow (1976)
• Vicente Aleixandre (1977)
• Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
• Odysseas Elytis (1979)
• Czesław Miłosz (1980)
• Elias Canetti (1981)
• Gabriel García Márquez (1982)
• William Golding (1983)
• Jaroslav Seifert (1984)
• Claude Simon (1985)
• Wole Soyinka (1986)
• Joseph Brodsky (1987)
• Naguib Mahfouz (1988)
• Camilo José Cela (1989)
• Octavio Paz (1990)
• Nadine Gordimer (1991)
• Derek Walcott (1992)
• Toni Morrison (1993)
• Kenzaburō Ōe (1994)
• Seamus Heaney (1995)
• Wisława Szymborska (1996)
• Dario Fo (1997)
• José Saramago (1998)
• Günter Grass (1999)
• Gao Xingjian (2000)
• V. S. Naipaul (2001)
• Imre Kertész (2002)
• J. M. Coetzee (2003)
• Elfriede Jelinek (2004)
• Harold Pinter (2005)
• Orhan Pamuk(2006)
• Doris Lessing (2007)
• J. M. G. Le Clézio (2008)
• Herta Müller (2009)
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)
• Tomas Tranströmer(2011)
• Mo Yan (2012)
• Alice Munro (2013)
• Patrick Modiano (2014)