Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

I like the idea that 'knowledge?', or data that makes sense, takes the form of a bunch of pyramids; of which the base consists of tons of useless or senseless data, and only small pinnacles of data are useful and/or makes sense.
That yet again reminds me of the internet, but of course, it goes for any collection of data.

Rand wrote: "As to how a man living in 1935 could have conceived of such a fantastic tale: it is possible (however unlikely) that Borges was introduced to some variety of psychoactive at some point in his life, given his geographic locale...."

Oh, and besides that the library feels like a Platonic "ideal form" of the internet, I found this interesting bit about the "binary" or more structural aspects of the informoration available in the library, on Wikipedia:
Quine's reduction

In a short essay, W.V.O. Quine noted the interesting fact that the Library of Babel is finite (that is, we will theoretically come to a point in history where everything has been written), and that the Library of Babel can be constructed in its entirety simply by writing a dot on one piece of paper and a dash on another.

These two sheets of paper could then be alternated at random to produce every possible text, in Morse code or equivalently binary.
Writes Quine:
"The ultimate absurdity is now staring us in the face: a universal library of two volumes, one containing a single dot and the other a dash.

Persistent repetition and alternation of the two is sufficient, we well know, for spelling out any and every truth. The miracle of the finite but universal library is a mere inflation of the miracle of binary notation: everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters."

Of course, as many of us know, machine code is written in binary, so this gives the whole scenario even more of an information technology "feel" to it - for me anyway.

Puddin Pointy-Toes wrote: "I suspect he does: 120 degrees...."

Ha, okay, the internal "angle" of a hexagon.

Rand wrote: "Unlike circles, hexagons may tesselate—like Escher's lizards. I found this animation on wikipedia useful for visualizing the geometrical differences between a circle and a hexagon. Note how the hexagon contains two half-circles. While a circle is a classic symbol of the infinite, it also suggests a uniformity or inherent pervasive oneness. The endless series of individual hexagons suggest the possibility of micro-containment within the boundless macro-verse...."

Ah yes, that is true, of course!

Ruth wrote: "The shape reminded me of bee hives. .."
That's a good way to form an image of the library - an infinite honeycomb!

Rand wrote: "For those of you who are into Minecraft, someone has recreated the Library using that.

In a similar vein, there is a fan-made worldmap for the game Thief that is based upon this story. You can watch the play-through here on youtube; I have no idea how to go about downloading that, though if you're into games, you should be able to figure it out :)...."

Ooh, thanks! I don't play Minecraft much, (it's very time-consuming) but I have friends and family members who do. ..and though Thief is a bit old for my personal tastes, that's very nice to know!

It's quite amazing how much this story or maybe one should call it a "scenario" rather than a story, has inspired.

Looking a bit further at the maths aspect - on around page two or three of the scenario, the narrator says:

" There are five shelves for each of the hexagon's walls; each shelf contains thirty-five books of uniform format; each book is of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty letters which are black in color." , and then he goes on to mention an axiom or two.

So of course, this story or scenario has inspired a few mathematicians. I found this book which seems to deal mainly with the maths presented in the scenario.

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel by William Goldbloom Bloch

Wonderful, and we're off to a good start, I'd say. Thanks so much for handling the intro etc. for us, even though you've had little spare time, Cecily!

Cecily wrote: "We're discussing, and maybe reading, this on the almost infinite internet. JLB was prescient, but does technology make it hard for us to imagine and interpret the story as he might have intended?.."

Well, one of the first things I thought when I read the story and noted the timeframe that he wrote it in, (which was apparently around 1939), was: how could a guy have, in a time when PC's weren't even used yet, have anticipated the internet?

A few things of note: the story starts off (in my translation) with the following sentence: "The universe (which others call the Library)"

This already makes one think and wonder about the plurality he is presenting. In a way, I suppose the universe is a bit like such a library - and here we could even start touching on theories of alternate universes.

One also needs to keep in mind that 'time' is a human construct - note that this library, like the cosmos, is (seemingly?) infinite. I would therefore assume that "time" is not a factor in this universe. Therefore, an infinite variety of possibilities can play out within it.

One thing that puzzles me a bit about the story still, is to wonder why Borges brought specific geometric shapes into the story or scenario, as it were. That sort of made it seem dry and architectural to me, but I don't know if he has a specific angle with that.

Our first story discussion thread is up! Please see:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Warmest thanks to Cecily, who despite travel problems and work pressures has come through for us beautifully!
Thank you Cecily!

Dear members, the voting is over and our 2 clear winners are: The Library of Babel in first place, with 6 votes, and The Circular Ruins in second place with 4 votes.

We will therefore start with Library of Babel shortly - I'll post the link as soon as Cecily, who is going to introduce some of the stories for us, has arrived back home and recovered sufficiently to make the first thread for us. :)

Welcome Annelies, we're looking forward to have you participate. No prior experience needed as long as you have access to what appears to be the winning stories for the week, being The Library of Babel and The Circular Ruins.

Good luck with your move!

Cool topic, Yolande!
I've seen some negative reviews on Palo Alto, and I must admit it had me curious - and even more so now after your thought-provoking post. Will come back and say more when I have more time, but anyway, I am curious enough to want to read his work now, but I don't want to really support it with my money if it is bad and if he is sexist. :P Will look at the library. ;o

Ruth wrote: "Re multiple votes, what if instead we had multiple polls, perhaps labelled something like: first choice, second choice, third choice? Could GR block that? ..."

No, they won't block it, it will be fine. I was indeed thinking that we should perhaps open, say one story on a Monday/Tuesday and then the next one on a Thursday/Friday and of course leave the threads open indefinitely - that way it would be easier for people to cherry-pick without things becoming too confusing.

We do seem to have two clear winners for now, so we could start the first week off with those, and then, when we close the first poll on Sunday or Monday whichever Cecily prefers, I can immediately put up the next poll, which would consist of all the same choices with the exception of the two already picked out, and so on, every week until nobody feels like reading any more Borges. :)

We can always change the rules as we go along, if necessary.

Allen wrote: "Ooh, I'm reading "The Circular Ruins" next since the title bears a resemblance to a significant plot point of the Southern Reach trilogy I'm also reading :)

Titles can be deceiving tho..."

Ha, ok, I'll read that one too, and we can compare notes as soon as the discussion is going. It's really really annoying that one can only vote once on GR polls. It would have been so nice if everyone could have had 2 or 3 votes, since now we're hard put to choose - I did want to read Library of Babel and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, but hopefully the former has enough votes by now to make it the winner, and so I voted for Circular Ruins to make it the runner-up.
(Though I was very tempted to cote for Tlön,...)

Since I also plan to read the Southern Reach sometime, it would be interesting to see if Vandermeer was referring to Borges. I guess you'd need to be careful not to give spoilers about the Vandermeer story, though, Allen...

MAN Booker winners are shown in each top line, then the runner-ups :

1969 P. H. Newby Something to Answer For
 Barry England Figures in a Landscape
 Nicholas Mosley Impossible Object
 Iris Murdoch The Nice and the Good
 Muriel Spark The Public Image
 G. M. Williams From Scenes like These

1970 Bernice Rubens The Elected Member
 A. L. Barker John Brown's Body
 Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
 Iris Murdoch Bruno's Dream
 William Trevor Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel
 T. W. Wheeler The Conjunction

1970 J. G. Farrell Troubles
 Nina Bawden The Birds on the Trees
 Shirley Hazzard The Bay of Noon
 Mary Renault Fire From Heaven
 Muriel Spark The Driver's Seat
 Patrick White The Vivisector

1971 V. S. Naipaul In a Free State
 Thomas Kilroy The Big Chapel
 Doris Lessing Briefing for a Descent into Hell
 Mordecai Richler St Urbain's Horseman
 Derek Robinson Goshawk Squadron
 Elizabeth Taylor Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

1972 John Berger G.
 Susan Hill The Bird of Night
 Thomas Keneally The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
 David Storey Pasmore

1973 J. G. Farrell The Siege of Krishnapur
 Beryl Bainbridge The Dressmaker
 Elizabeth Mavor The Green Equinox
 Iris Murdoch The Black Prince

1974 Nadine Gordimer The Conservationist
 Stanley Middleton Holiday
 Kingsley Amis Ending Up
 Beryl Bainbridge The Bottle Factory Outing
 C. P. Snow In Their Wisdom

1975 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Heat and Dust
 Thomas Keneally Gossip from the Forest

1976 David Storey Saville
 André Brink An Instant in the Wind
 R. C. Hutchinson Rising
 Brian Moore The Doctor's Wife
 Julian Rathbone King Fisher Lives
 William Trevor The Children of Dynmouth

1977 Paul Scott Staying On
 Paul Bailey Peter Smart's Confessions
 Caroline Blackwood Great Granny Webster
 Jennifer Johnston Shadows on our Skin
 Penelope Lively The Road to Lichfield
 Barbara Pym Quartet in Autumn

1978 Iris Murdoch The Sea, the Sea
 Kingsley Amis Jake's Thing
 André Brink Rumours of Rain
 Penelope Fitzgerald The Bookshop
 Jane Gardam God on the Rocks
 Bernice Rubens A Five-Year Sentence

1979 Penelope Fitzgerald Offshore
 Thomas Keneally Confederates
 V. S. Naipaul A Bend in the River
 Julian Rathbone Joseph
 Fay Weldon Praxis

1980 William Golding Rites of Passage
 Anthony Burgess Earthly Powers
 Anita Desai Clear Light of Day
 Alice Munro The Beggar Maid
 Julia O'Faolain No Country for Young Men
 Barry Unsworth Pascali's Island
 J. L. Carr A Month in the Country

1981 Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children
 Molly Keane Good Behaviour
 Doris Lessing The Sirian Experiments
 Ian McEwan The Comfort of Strangers
 Ann Schlee Rhine Journey
 Muriel Spark Loitering with Intent
 D. M. Thomas The White Hotel

1982 Thomas Keneally Schindler's Ark
 John Arden Silence Among the Weapons
 William Boyd An Ice-Cream War
 Lawrence Durrell Constance or Solitary Practices
 Alice Thomas Ellis The 27th Kingdom
 Timothy Mo Sour Sweet

1983 J. M. Coetzee Life & Times of Michael K
 Malcolm Bradbury Rates of Exchange
 John Fuller Flying to Nowhere
 Anita Mason The Illusionist
 Salman Rushdie Shame
 Graham Swift Waterland

1984 Anita Brookner Hotel du Lac
 J. G. Ballard Empire of the Sun
 Julian Barnes Flaubert's Parrot
 Anita Desai In Custody
 Penelope Lively According to Mark
 David Lodge Small World

1985 Keri Hulme The Bone People
 Peter Carey Illywhacker
 J. L. Carr The Battle of Pollocks Crossing
 Doris Lessing The Good Terrorist
 Jan Morris Last Letters from Hav
 Iris Murdoch The Good Apprentice

1986 Kingsley Amis The Old Devils
 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale
 Paul Bailey Gabriel's Lament
 Robertson Davies What's Bred in the Bone
 Kazuo Ishiguro An Artist of the Floating World
 Timothy Mo An Insular Possession

1987 Penelope Lively Moon Tiger
 Chinua Achebe Anthills of the Savannah
 Peter Ackroyd Chatterton
 Nina Bawden Circles of Deceit
 Brian Moore The Colour of Blood
 Iris Murdoch The Book and the Brotherhood

1988 Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda
 Bruce Chatwin Utz
 Penelope Fitzgerald The Beginning of Spring
 David Lodge Nice Work
 Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses
 Marina Warner The Lost Father

1989 Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day
 Margaret Atwood Cat's Eye
 John Banville The Book of Evidence
 Sybille Bedford Jigsaw
 James Kelman A Disaffection
 Rose Tremain Restoration

1990 A. S. Byatt Possession: A Romance
 Beryl Bainbridge An Awfully Big Adventure
 Penelope Fitzgerald The Gate of Angels
 John McGahern Amongst Women
 Brian Moore Lies of Silence
 Mordecai Richler Solomon Gursky Was Here

1991 Ben Okri The Famished Road
 Martin Amis Time's Arrow
 Roddy Doyle The Van
 Rohinton Mistry Such a Long Journey
 Timothy Mo The Redundancy of Courage
 William Trevor Reading Turgenev[1]

1992 Michael Ondaatje The English Patient
 Barry Unsworth Sacred Hunger
 Christopher Hope Serenity House
 Patrick McCabe The Butcher Boy
 Ian McEwan Black Dogs
 Michèle Roberts Daughters of the House

1993 Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
 Tibor Fischer Under the Frog
 Michael Ignatieff Scar Tissue
 David Malouf Remembering Babylon
 Caryl Phillips Crossing the River
 Carol Shields The Stone Diaries

1994 James Kelman How late it was, how late
 Romesh Gunesekera Reef
 Abdulrazak Gurnah Paradise
 Alan Hollinghurst The Folding Star
 George Mackay Brown Beside the Ocean of Time
 Jill Paton Walsh Knowledge of Angels

1995 Pat Barker The Ghost Road
 Justin Cartwright In Every Face I Meet
 Salman Rushdie The Moor's Last Sigh
 Barry Unsworth Morality Play
 Tim Winton The Riders

1996 Graham Swift Last Orders
 Margaret Atwood Alias Grace
 Beryl Bainbridge Every Man for Himself
 Seamus Deane Reading in the Dark
 Shena Mackay The Orchard on Fire
 Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

1997 Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things
 Jim Crace Quarantine
 Mick Jackson The Underground Man
 Bernard MacLaverty Grace Notes
 Tim Parks Europa
 Madeleine St John The Essence of the Thing

1998 Ian McEwan Amsterdam
 Beryl Bainbridge Master Georgie
 Julian Barnes England, England
 Martin Booth The Industry of Souls
 Patrick McCabe Breakfast on Pluto
 Magnus Mills The Restraint of Beasts

1999 J. M. Coetzee Disgrace
 Anita Desai Fasting, Feasting
 Michael Frayn Headlong
 Andrew O'Hagan Our Fathers
 Ahdaf Soueif The Map of Love
 Colm Tóibín The Blackwater Lightship

2000 Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin
 Trezza Azzopardi The Hiding Place
 Michael Collins The Keepers of Truth
 Kazuo Ishiguro When We Were Orphans
 Matthew Kneale English Passengers
 Brian O'Doherty The Deposition of Father McGreevy

2001 Peter Carey True History of the Kelly Gang
 Ian McEwan Atonement
 Andrew Miller Oxygen
 David Mitchell number9dream
 Rachel Seiffert The Dark Room
 Ali Smith Hotel World

2002 Yann Martel Life of Pi
 Rohinton Mistry Family Matters
 Carol Shields Unless
 William Trevor The Story of Lucy Gault
 Sarah Waters Fingersmith
 Tim Winton Dirt Music

2003 DBC Pierre Vernon God Little
 Monica Ali Brick Lane
 Margaret Atwood Oryx and Crake
 Damon Galgut The Good Doctor
 Zoë Heller Notes on a Scandal
 Clare Morrall Astonishing Splashes of Colour

2004 Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty
 Achmat Dangor Bitter Fruit
 Sarah Hall The Electric Michelangelo
 David Mitchell Cloud Atlas
 Colm Tóibín The Master
 Gerard Woodward I'll Go to Bed at Noon

2005 John Banville The Sea
 Julian Barnes Arthur & George
 Sebastian Barry A Long Long Way
 Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go
 Ali Smith The Accidental
 Zadie Smith On Beauty

2006 Kiran Desai The Inheritance of Loss
 Kate Grenville The Secret River
 M. J. Hyland Carry Me Down
 Hisham Matar In the Country of Men
 Edward St Aubyn Mother's Milk
 Sarah Waters The Night Watch

2007 Anne Enright The Gathering
 Nicola Barker Darkmans
 Mohsin Hamid The Reluctant Fundamentalist
 Lloyd Jones Mister Pip
 Ian McEwan On Chesil Beach
 Indra Sinha Animal's People

2008 Aravind Adiga The White Tiger
 Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
 Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies
 Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs
 Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency
 Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole

2009 Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall
 A. S. Byatt The Children's Book
 J. M. Coetzee Summertime
 Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze
 Simon Mawer The Glass Room
 Sarah Waters The Little Stranger

2010 Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question
 Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America
 Emma Donoghue Room
 Damon Galgut In a Strange Room
 Andrea Levy The Long Song
 Tom McCarthy C

2011 Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending
 Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie
 Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
 Esi Edugyan Half-Blood Blues
 Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
 A D Miller Snowdrops

2012 Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies
 Deborah Levy Swimming Home
 Alison Moore The Lighthouse
 Will Self Umbrella
 Tan Twan Eng The Garden of Evening Mists
 Jeet Thayil Narcopolis

2013 Eleanor Catton The Luminaries
 NoViolet Bulawayo We Need New Names
 Jim Crace Harvest
 Jhumpa Lahiri The Lowland
 Ruth Ozeki A Tale for the Time Being
 Colm Tóibín The Testament of Mary

2014 Richard Flanagan The Narrow Road to the Deep North
 Joshua Ferris To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
 Karen Joy Fowler We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
 Howard Jacobson J
 Neel Mukherjee The Lives of Others
 Ali Smith How to Be Both

List of Pulitzer Prize winners:

2015 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)

An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.

2014 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)

A beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters that follows a grieving boy’s entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction, a book that stimulates the mind and touches the heart.

2013 The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (Random House)

An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.

2012 No award

No award

2011 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A.. Knopf)

An inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed.

2010 Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)

A powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.

2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

A collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating.

2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)

2006 March by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar)

2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins)

2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar)

2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Alfred A. Knopf)

2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House)

2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)

1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (Crown)

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf)

1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Viking)

1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Charles Scribner's Sons)

1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt)

1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (Alfred A. Knopf)

1991 Rabbit At Rest by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf)

1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (Farrar)

1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf)

1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf)

1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf)

1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)

1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (Random House)

1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy (Viking)

1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Harcourt Brace)

1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (Knopf)

Here's a list of Nobel Prize winners in the last 50 years:

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2014
Patrick Modiano
"for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013
Alice Munro
"master of the contemporary short story"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012
Mo Yan
"who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011
Tomas Tranströmer
"because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2010
Mario Vargas Llosa
"for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009
Herta Müller
"who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
"author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007
Doris Lessing
"that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2006
Orhan Pamuk
"who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005
Harold Pinter
"who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004
Elfriede Jelinek
"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2003
John M. Coetzee
"who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002
Imre Kertész
"for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
"for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2000
Gao Xingjian
"for an æuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1999
Günter Grass
"whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1998
José Saramago
"who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1997
Dario Fo
"who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996
Wislawa Szymborska
"for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995
Seamus Heaney
"for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1994
Kenzaburo Oe
"who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993
Toni Morrison
"who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1992
Derek Walcott
"for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991
Nadine Gordimer
"who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1990
Octavio Paz
"for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1989
Camilo José Cela
"for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1988
Naguib Mahfouz
"who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1987
Joseph Brodsky
"for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
Wole Soyinka
"who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1985
Claude Simon
"who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1984
Jaroslav Seifert
"for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1983
William Golding
"for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
Gabriel García Márquez
"for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1981
Elias Canetti
"for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1980
Czeslaw Milosz
"who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1979
Odysseus Elytis
"for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1978
Isaac Bashevis Singer
"for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1977
Vicente Aleixandre
"for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry between the wars"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1976
Saul Bellow
"for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1975
Eugenio Montale
"for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1974
Eyvind Johnson
"for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom"

Harry Martinson
"for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1973
Patrick White
"for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1972
Heinrich Böll
"for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1971
Pablo Neruda
"for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1970
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
"for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
Samuel Beckett
"for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1968
Yasunari Kawabata
"for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1967
Miguel Angel Asturias
"for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1966
Shmuel Yosef Agnon
"for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people"

Nelly Sachs
"for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1965
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
"for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people"

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1964
Jean-Paul Sartre
"for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age"

Hello everyone.
Literary prizes are often a cause for controversy.
Nevertheless, I always wonder what caused a person's work to be chosen for such an award, and I have been wanting to, for a while now, to start a discussion forum in order to discuss both the merit of such awards, as well as the literary works which have been selected for such awards.

One of the most well-known prizes is obviously the Nobel_Prize.

I rather favor international prizes, which is why I'm interested in following the Man Booker International Prize, not to be confused with the English common garden variety thereof.

Then there's also the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the International Rubery Book Award and a few others such as the Franz Kafka Prize and others.

So far I have been interested in starting to read Nobel prize winners, as well as winners from both of the MAN Booker awards (The British and the international prize). Besides fiction-only prizes, I have thought of looking into various categories of the Pulitzer Prize as well.

I would love some group involvement here. Members are invited to comment on any aspect of literary prizes, including whether you feel I have left out some important stuff. I will be making threads for prizewinners of the various prizes in various years shortly.

One of the problems I have encountered, is that there are so many prizewinners and runner-ups, that it's hard to know where to begin!

Hello Holly - welcome! We have various threads where recs can be made and found. :) Have fun!

Hi, Andy! Most of us have gone through this one already, but the threads are still (and will indefinitely remain) open to be read and posted in at your leisure. :)

We discussed chapter 1 in this thread that we are in now, and then the discussion goes on to the next 3 chapters here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

...but there are spoilers, so best wait until you have the book and have started reading!

Yolande wrote: "Yay also for Tita who finally found the strength to stand up to her mother, even though she was a ghost ;)"

Absolutely! Nice bit of personal growth we see there, eh?

Yolande wrote: "I'm finally finished and have thoroughly enjoyed this novel, especially the magical descriptions in the ending :)

Traveller, what you said about Tita's food enhancing what the people eating it fel..."

Nice catch on the Roasaura->guilt idea, Yolande! and congrats on finishing! \O/ Yaye!

Yes, agree with your thoughts on the MR aspect. And about Esperanza not being forced to be a life-long servant. Maybe that was also part of what was making Rosaura bloat up like that; her own selfishness.

No idea, but the "drinking vs eating chocolate" definitely makes a big difference in understanding the title, I feel.

Yolande wrote: "Haha. That incident is scarily in character with the role Depardieu played in Man in the Iron Mask. He did similar drunken related stuff in that. So I'm kind of not surprised :p"

The idjut. :) (Cool story, that, btw. - I mean The Man in the Iron Mask)
Speaking of Dumas; although my father had the French originals and the English translations of the original versions of all of Dumas's work, whom he adored, I can't remember if I ever read any in the original, they're so well known and ubiquitously copied.

But in any case, I now have to read The Three Musketeers as part of research on masculinities. Now that I've gathered a few copies, the book seems so much thicker than I seem to remember it being, so ... I wonder if I should cheat and see if there isn't an abridged version.... :P I hope it wouldn't defy the object if I did... ugh, maybe just stick to the long unabridged and skim where necessary. :P