Nobel Prize In Literature
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Han Kang’s Transgressive Art October 15, 2024
“What a great day for Korea!” my mom wrote to me on Thursday. “Nobel for Han Kang!”For the past few decades, several South Korean authors have been bruited about as contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature, notably the poet Ko Un and the novelist...
Alice Munro, Master of the Short Story, Dies at 92 May 15, 2024
Alice Munro, the revered Canadian author who started writing short stories because she did not think she had the time or the talent to master novels, then stubbornly dedicated her long career to churning out psychologically dense stories that dazzled...
Nobel Prizewinners Past and Present October 16, 2023
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...
Mystical Realism October 13, 2023
Sometimes the Swedish Academy actually gets the Nobel Prize in Literature right, as it did this year when it gave the award to Jon Fosse. The Norwegian playwright and novelist doesn’t represent any particular identity or ideology: he is an introverte...
Jon Fosse and the Art of What Can’t Be Named October 09, 2023
In Oslo, in September, I attended the preview of Jon Fosse’s play “I Svarte Skogen Inne” (“Inside the Black Forest”). The theatre was small and dark, without a stage, and the scenery was minimal: a large illuminated rock in the middle, some scattered...
The Nobel Winner Whose Writing Speaks to Everyone October 06, 2023
Jon Fosse, the Norwegian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023, was better known in the English-speaking world on announcement morning than many past winners have been. Last year saw the U.S. publication of the final volume of his Septolog...
An Unpublished Interview With Gabriel García Márquez October 05, 2023
The excerpts that follow are part of an extensive conversation with Gabriel García Márquez, which I recorded on May 6, 1994, in Havana, Cuba, with the participation of the recently-deceased journalist Mauricio Vicent. The Colombian novelist was 67 ye...
What Happened to Peter Handke? July 27, 2023
Peter Handke’s latest novel, The Fruit Thief, translated by Krishna Winston, begins with a man going out for a walk. He is waylaid from the first step: Walking barefoot on the grass, he gets stung by a bee. The sting opens up a flood of thoughts—abou...
Milan Kundera’s Last Joke July 13, 2023
Milan Kundera had the questionable good fortune to live through what seemed like the historic victory of his defence of the individual against the state — only to see his life’s work become shockingly relevant again before his death on Tuesday aged 9...
Annie Ernaux on Her Unapologetic Career May 22, 2023
When Annie Ernaux opens the front door to me at her home in Cergy, 40 minutes outside Paris, she immediately bursts out laughing. The source of her hilarity is my extensive baggage, which I’ve dragged from London on an early Eurostar. “Don’t worry,” ...
The Inventor of Magical Realism May 08, 2023
Neither Gabriel García Márquez nor Mario Vargas Llosa had yet been born when the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias began to write his first novel, El Señor Presidente, in December 1922. He labored on it for a decade while living in self-imposed exile ...
Is Annie Ernaux the Most Brutally Honest Writer Alive? May 04, 2023
Perhaps with no clearer motive than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that “France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older — intelligence and good manners,” we packed up our possessions during the last dark days of one December...
Annie Ernaux’s 'Look at the Lights, My Love' April 05, 2023
In Look at the Lights, My Love, translated into English by Alison L. Strayer, Annie Ernaux ponders the supermarket. Seasons and capitalism collide in our shared cultural space. The au pair who stole sweets and alternated between bulimia and anorexia ...
Interview: Kenzaburo Oe March 14, 2023
Kenzaburo Oe has devoted his life to taking certain subjects seriously—victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the struggles of the people of Okinawa, the challenges of the disabled, the discipline of the scholarly life—while not appearing to tak...
How Marguerite Duras Shaped Nobel Winner Annie Ernaux December 16, 2022
In a recent interview, Annie Ernaux, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature, said of her detractors, “They think I’m not legitimate. What disgusts them is that there are people who have found, in literature, something that speaks to the...
Annie Ernaux Turns Memory Into Art November 16, 2022
“I don’t feel particularly like another woman,” Annie Ernaux said, on a recent afternoon, when she was asked what it was like to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Does winning a prize—the prize—turn you into someone else? In the minds of others it d...
"The Philosophy of Modern Song" by Bob Dylan November 07, 2022
"The Philosophy of Modern Song" is Bob Dylan’s first book of new writing since 2004’s "Chronicles: Volume One"—and since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016."The Philosophy of Modern Song" by Bob DylanSimon & SchusterDylan, who began worki...
Annie Ernaux and Working Class Dignity October 17, 2022
Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last Thursday, was not on the other end of the telephone when the committee rang to deliver the news. Last year, she received a prank text telling her she had won the illustrious award, whic...
Annie Ernaux: Queen of the Suburbs October 13, 2022
Think Milton Keynes, with touches of Harlow, Stevenage or Crawley. Its location in relation to the capital, though, plants the town closer to Watford, even Slough. You might just about imagine a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature growing up in a...
Annie Ernaux and the Millennial Sex Novel October 13, 2022
Getting Lost — the collected journals from the affair that inspired freshly minted Nobel winner Annie Ernaux’s novel Simple Passion — was published in English for the first time this fall. Originally published in France, Passion Simple (the French t...
Annie Ernaux Is a Perfect Nobel Laureate October 10, 2022
The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature, is fond of overthinking things—perhaps unsurprising, given that it is made up predominantly of Nordic academics and other members of the ponderousoisie. This is, after all, an award tha...
Annie Ernaux Wins the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature October 07, 2022
The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. Ernaux, who writes novels about daily life in France a...
Authors You Should Read October 06, 2022
These five writers have never won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and they likely won’t win this year. But their names keep coming up for a reason....
Who Will Win the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature? October 04, 2022
For 121 years, the Nobel Prize for literature has sought to honor the best writing in the world, and for 121 years everyone has argued that it has managed to do no such thing. In the battle between the Swedish Academy and its most fearsome opponents,...
Why You Should Read Peter Handke October 25, 2019
As always, I’m writing for anyone willing to take the time to read. But in this instance, I’m chiefly writing for those who haven’t read Peter Handke or who have read only a little of his work—readers who might have been inclined (after the Nobel Pri...
