The Nobel prize for literature this year goes to Herta Muller. I'll have to admit up front that I had never heard of her, but then again, some of the journalists reporting about her selection seemed unfamiliar with her writing.
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The committee that chooses the Nobel laureates in literature does not always opt for writers widely familiar in America; for instance, the list of the literature prize winners in the last ten years, include such names as Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio , Elfriede Jelinek, and Imre Kertész. It is perhaps more interesting that since 1901, when the Nobel prize for literature was first awarded, the committee has passed over such noted writers such as Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Frost, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce.
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Herta Muller was born in 1953 in a German speaking section of Romania, and a number of her books deal with life under Communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu in that country. After years of persecution and censorship in Romania, the author moved to Germany in 1987.
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Only 5 of Ms. Muller's 20 books have been translated into English so far, but with her new celebribrity, this seems likely to change. You can check the Nassau Library System's holdings for Herta Muller by clicking on this link.
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We'd be interested to know who you think deserves a Nobel prize for literature.
If anyone from the Nobel Prize committee is listening, I still have high hopes for my favorite author, David Lodge.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a toughie. I should read up on why they chose Herta Muller. It's such a prestigious prize, I think it would be hard for me to pick. And I don't suppose they're going to give it to Agatha Christie, either.
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