Life really is like a dream (sometimes, alas, a nightmare). I feel that keenly during the ritual announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature each year. Not even the orotund convolutions of the official announcement can break the spell.
If the winner is a writer I’ve read who seems not quite up to snuff, I accept the result stoically. So too when, as last week with Jon Fosse, the prize goes to a writer I’ve only briefly investigated and judged not to be my cup of tea. When the writer is one I’ve never read at all—which doesn’t happen often but does occur now and then, as with Abdulrazak Gurnah in 2021—I catch up a bit. That was how I came to read Herta Müller (the 2009 laureate) for the first time; she quickly became a favorite. I should add that it’s the announcement I care about, not the formal ceremony later in the year, though some of the Nobel Lectures turn out to be worth reading (Müller’s very much included).
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