Who're Your Favorites?

[Kris]

Plug for a Nobel winner here. You might think that having won is enough, but try telling that to poor Henrik Pontoppidan...

[Leajk]

Selma Lagerlöf is an amazing writer and much more deserving than many of the other Swedes who got favourised through their ties to the committee. There was actually a huge argument in the committee while they were discussing if she should get the prize, especially I imagine since she was a woman.

[Frank]

Wow! Big list:
John Steinbeck
Hermann Hesse
IB Singer
Mario Vargas Llosa
Naguib Machfuz
Pearl Buck
Jose Saragmago..

[Bjorn]

Agree with Lagerlöf. Also probably Hesse, Müller, Singer (though I need to read more of him, any recommendations on where to go from The Slave?) and Mann.

[Frank]

Bjorn wrote: "Agree with Lagerlöf. Also probably Hesse, Müller, Singer (though I need to read more of him, any recommendations on where to go from The Slave?) and Mann."

Bjorn wrote: "Agree with Lagerlöf. Also probably Hesse, Müller, Singer (though I need to read more of him, any recommendations on where to go from The Slave?) and Mann."

The saying about Vivaldi ("He didn't write 600 concertos, he wrote one concerto 600 times") applies to Singer's novels as well. Still, I'd chose Sosha over some others for it's warmth, and Enemies is amusingly self-mocking in a Woody Allen kind of way. Beyond that, The Slave is indeed worth reading, as is The Magician of Lublin. If you still have appetite after that, you can chose any of the large family saga, say, The Family Moskat.

Happy reading!

[Bjorn]

Thanks, Frank!

[Richard]

I was a big Alice Munro fan long BEFORE she won the Prize!

[Bruno]

Golding, Böll, Saramago, Grass & Oé. Especially Grass & Böll, they are the reason, as well as Nietzsche & Wittgenstein are, I am studying German Language & Literature.

[Wolfe]

Kawabata is without a doubt the most talented writer that ever lived. I'm not saying he's the most influential, the most experimental, or even the most complex. But his style of writing, the subtlety and beauty of his prose that is almost poetry, are a leaugue of their own. And he's the only winner without even one lesser work to his name. Everything he has ever written has been as brilliant as the rest of his works.

I've read all of his works that have been translated into a language I can read, meaning English, Dutch or German. Which probably means that only someone who's fluent in Japanese has read more of his works than I have.

[Kamakana]

Jose Saramago
Kawabata Yasunari
Alice Munro
JMG Le Clezio

[josearcadiobuendia]

1. Gabriel García Márquez: One hundred years of Solitude & Love in the time of cholera.
2. Thomas Mann: The magic mountain & The Buddenbrooks
3. John Steinbeck: East of eden & The grapes of wrath
4. Albert Camus: The stranger
5. William Faulkner: Absalom, absalom!
6. Toni Morrison: Beloved & Song of Solomon
7. Eugene O´Neill: Long day´s journey into the night
8. Alexandr Solzhenytsin: One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
9. Halldor Laxness: Independent people
10. Ivo Andric: The bridge on the Drina

[[deleted user]]

Everyone everyone's mentioned. Solzhenytsin was probably the hardest, but luckily I read A Day in the Life and Cancer Ward when I was very young, before I knew that agony wasn't a fantasy. Andric. O'Neill. Beckett and Heaney (I'm Irish). Buck. Munro, oh, Munro. (There is a brief series of postings on her elsewhere in this group, which almost make me wonder if one doesn't need to be a woman of a certain age to feel the truth of her, but that's just me.) Bellow. I haven't read any of them that haven't left me breathless. Except Churchill, but I wouldn't take anything away from him. His mother grew up where my family lived (although we moved in different circles; we were farmers). And he deserves to be remembered. Garcia Marquez. I have to say, there are many of them, as with Solzhenytsin, whom I do not believe I could read today; my heart's too fragile, I know too much is true.

[[deleted user]]

josearcadiobuendia wrote: "1. Gabriel García Márquez: One hundred years of Solitude & Love in the time of cholera.
2. Thomas Mann: The magic mountain & The Buddenbrooks
3. John Steinbeck: East of eden & The grapes of wrath
4..."

I see you posted to this group also. Looks interesting, but I think it's a dead group. I'm going to keep posting, though, there's so many books out there and so few of them seem to get mentioned on GR. Hello, anyway!

[Kris]

Hi, I started the group but haven't been on in awhile. By all means keep posting, AnnLoretta! Ever read George Seferis?

[[deleted user]]

Hi! Anyone seen this? Gambling odds for 2016 Nobel in Literature. I don't know where I should have posted this, but these are apparently the favorites of the bookmakers, hence my choice. Let me know if it's in the wrong place, please? I can't imagine (well, I'm not a gambler) a more "squishy" sort of place to put one's money.

http://www.nicerodds.co.uk/nobel-priz...

[[deleted user]]

Kris wrote: "Hi, I started the group but haven't been on in awhile. By all means keep posting, AnnLoretta! Ever read George Seferis?"

No, no Seferis. He doesn't seem very available, either. I'll put him on my interlibrary loan list. Thanks. In the meantime, I will see if he's online.

[[deleted user]]

Kris wrote: "Hi, I started the group but haven't been on in awhile. By all means keep posting, AnnLoretta! Ever read George Seferis?"

My god, my god, just read his "Helen." Thank you, more than I can say. Thank you.

[josearcadiobuendia]

The list of candidates is repited year after year. Unfortunately I´ve only read a few, with most of the others being completely unknown to me. My three favorites from this list are Philip Roth, John Banville and Ismail Kadare, who I consider to be well within or even above the nobel standards. I´m not so enthusiastic about Murakami, the favorite of the reading community. Still I wouldn´t mind the award going to a less known writer as often a nobel prize label is the only way for some authors to be read.

Here is the information about the selection process:
https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination...

So by now, the committee must have reduced their list to only five candidates, having until Octuber to decide one among them. This shortlist of course is not made public.

So, who are your favorites for this year??

[Wolfe]

I'm hoping it's Amos Oz. He deserves it more than any living author imo. More than Murakami, that's for sure.

[Neal]

I haven't read Amos Oz, though I've listened to some of his short stories being read in podcasts. They are good, quite good even, though I wasn't totally impressed. I'll have to pick something up by him to get acquainted. Based on his reputation I don't think it would be a misplaced award.

I'm not opposed to Roth winning, but I think the award can do better than him. Even if they award an American, I would rather it go to Louise Erdrich or Thomas Pynchon or William T. Vollmann or Anne Carson. I've only read one Roth, and while it was good, it was only good, and I can understand why the committee hasn't awarded him yet.

How about Ngugi wa Thiong'o? I'm a big fan of his work. A Grain of Wheat is a masterpiece.

Or Nawal el-Sadaari? Also an incredible talent. And a strong voice.

Maybe we'll see somebody young come forward again, like Laszlo Krazshnahorkai, or Javier Marias. Both are certainly deserving given their output already.

[Bjorn]

I'm not opposed to Roth winning, but I think the award can do better than him.

And vice versa. I think Roth could definitely deserve the prize, but at this point he's been used as the standard "Why doesn't he get it?!?" name for so long that giving it to him would just look like the Academy finally caved to the pressure. Roth is already one of the most widely read and praised "serious" authors alive, it's hard to see what the Nobel would add to that, especially under those circumstances.

Pynchon would be fun. After all the hubbub about no American getting it recently, how about giving it to an American who's guaranteed not to show up to accept it? :)

I'm all in favour of Ngugi getting it. Or Hwang Sok-yong. Or Krasznahorkai or Cartarescu, for that matter, but it might be fun with a non-European this year... I know, give it to Ryu Murakami and watch people's heads explode.

[Luke]

Bjorn wrote: "I'm not opposed to Roth winning, but I think the award can do better than him.

And vice versa. I think Roth could definitely deserve the prize, but at this point he's been used as the standard "Wh..."

Hwang Sok-yong would be effing fantastic. Now I'm thinking I should start my recently acquired Wizard of the Crow. It'd probably last me till the prize is actually awarded. Even if Thiong’o doesn't win it then, it'd give me credibility for the future. There's also a bunch who're either probably too young (Adiche, Ozeki, Roy) or too "genre" (Delany, Le Guin, Condé) or both, but they're still fun to root for.

[Bjorn]

Aubrey wrote: "Bjorn wrote: "I'm not opposed to Roth winning, but I think the award can do better than him.

And vice versa. I think Roth could definitely deserve the prize, but at this point he's been used as th..."

Wizard of the Crow is absolutely brilliant. His best, as far as I'm concerned (though I haven't actually got around to A Grain of Wheat yet).

Yeah, I wouldn't give it to, say, Adichie or NDiaye or Cole or Bouraoui yet, but they're still young and have a few decades of great books ahead of them still. They youngest winners in recent years have been around 55, I don't see them giving it to anyone below that.

[[deleted user]]

I am hoping for Roth. I have read most of his work, and after he overcame his youth, his bildungsroman sexual coming of age period (which admittedly took him a while), he sharpened his focus, stopped asking who his characters are sexually, but who they are as individuals and in the various circles of culture they inhabit. He has done this relentlessly ever since. One of the books I'm reading now is his Operation Shylock: A Confession, and I have to say that when I began it I thought it was going to be an exploration of the role of the Jew in the geopolitical world. But it came back, in the most unexpected ways, through, well, no spoiler to say that one of the things he wrote of was his interview of Aharon Appelfeld, which actually happened. I love his characters continual search for meaning, within and without the traditions they grew up in, live in. I think to some degree, no, to a very large degree, Murakami makes the same exploration, and I love his books, also. But it is what separates him from Oe that will keep him from the prize, at least for now, I believe. There is no comparison.

But Roth has brought the search for identity to just a remarkable degree of acuity. To say he won't be considered because he has retired is incredibly sad. I don't know that he has the facility to write any longer. I don't know that he doesn't. Only that it is incredibly heavy lifting. Being 83 shouldn't nullify his body of work.

Just musing. He has asked the hard questions. In remarkable prose, always human, confusing, unsettling. Before Jonathan Foer asked some hard question, Roth had already been there.

Well, just my two cents.

[Bjorn]

I thought this article on all the people who will NOT win was pretty good: https://newrepublic.com/article/13749...

Still rooting: Ngugi, Pynchon, Hwang.

[Bjorn]

Put up a blog post to straighten out some common misconceptions about the prize:

The Nobel Prize in Literature: A Slightly Irreverent FAQ https://medium.com/@katafon/the-nobel...

[Luke]

Bjorn wrote: "Put up a blog post to straighten out some common misconceptions about the prize:

The Nobel Prize in Literature: A Slightly Irreverent FAQ https://medium.com/@katafon/the-nobel...-..."

:)

[Paul]

Bjorn wrote: "I thought this article on all the people who will NOT win was pretty good: https://newrepublic.com/article/13749..."

From that article (and for avoidance of doubt I would have said exactly the same thing) : "Bob Dylan 100 percent is not going to win. Stop saying Bob Dylan should win the Nobel Prize."

Shame the Nobel Committee didn't read the article

[William]

Ok, I've read 102 of the 118 Nobel Laureates to date, here are my top ten alphabetically :

Golding
Heaney
Hemingway
Kipling
Laxness
Pasternak
Sholokov
Spitteler
Steinbeck
Szymborska

I'm currently reading Lagerlof and based on prior posts she may be breaking into my top ten.

My top 3 are Laxness, Pasternak and Sholokov (I obviously have a weakness for the Russian style).

[Sano]

These are those I've enjoyed so far and by whom I want to read more:

Selma Lagerlöf
Knut Hamsun
William Butler Yeats
George Bernard Shaw
Thomas Mann
Luigi Pirandello
Eugene O’Neill
Hermann Hesse
François Mauriac
Ernest Hemingway
Albert Camus
Yasunari Kawabata
Heinrich Böll
Nagib Mahfuz
Kenzaburō Ōe
Gao Xingjian
Elfriede Jelinek
Orhan Pamuk
Patrick Modiano
Kazuo Ishiguro

My 3 favorites of those are currently probably:

George Bernard Shaw
Francois Mauriac
Knut Hamsun

That's probably because I've read the most from those 3 so far.

[Xalatan]

Pearl Buck
François Mauriac