Well with the Nobel suspended for a year. I decide to name a few writers who should won the Nobel but didn’t. Join in and name some yourself these next few weeks. using the hashtag #nobelmisses here are my three . I could name a hundred or more over time from Burgess to Bolano, Calvino to Perec!!
James Joyce
Now I don’t know a writer that has influenced and changed how we wrote as much as Joyce did of course other writers did similar things but Joyce managed tostick everything into his books. So he is my first should won the nobel.
Jorge Luis Borges
Another omission ok he never wrote a novel. But he created some of the finest short stories that set other writers on the path to writing a hundred novels. since in his stories he showed how we can twist ourselves and reflections of our lives and rewrite history into a whole new reality.
Assia Djebar
The Algerian is a writer I need to read more of but was an important female voice from the Islamic world in recent times she gave voice to those that didn’t have one.
These are my three choices #nobelmisses pick yours and let’s get a chat about who missed the Nobel Lit prize over time as there isn’t a winner this year.
Definitely Calvino and Perec – two of my all time favourites! 🙂
Brilliant topic – I’ll have to think a bit before I suggest someone – maybe W.G. Sebold? I’ve read Joyce and Borges but not Assisa Djebar but I’ll gladly look into her works.
Great discussion point. i’m not convinced by the selection of Assia Djebar but would agree with Joyce. How about adding in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to the list of contenders?
For sure
1. Graham Greene despite that he is sometimes considered a genre novelist.
2,.Abdul Rahman Munif, a Yemeni fiction writer who was very anti-West and anti-Saudi Princes so even today he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves, but his ‘Cities of Salt’ is one of the great works of literature
Gerald Murnane, the greatest writer most people have never heard of!
I would like to see it go to Daša Drndić
Me to
Borges definitely. Umberto Eco. Marguerite Duras. Nicole Brossard. Clarice Lispector. Virginia Woolf. Ingeborg Bachmann. Ba Jin. Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Leo Tolstoy. Yukio Mishima. Munshi Premchand. Italo Calvino.
Kafka, Proust, Musil, Celan, Kavafis, Toer, Bachmann, Babel, Achmatova, Robert Walser, Svevo, Nicanor Parra? It is telling, that the Nobel Prize goes frequently to mediocre authors, while many literary giants are ignored. And my guess is that this will happen also to most living authors that would deserve this award – Ismail Kadare comes to mind.
I think Zbigniew Herbert should be in the running for ‘should have,’ as well as most of the authors others have suggested. We can hope for Thiong’o next year. And thanks to these suggestions, I’m going to try Nicole Brossard. ‘Cities of Salt’ is on the to-be-read pile already.