Who will succeed Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse on the Nobel literature prize list? Verdict this October 10.
Who will succeed Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, who was crowned last year, on the Nobel literature prize list? Verdict on Thursday October 10. For the moment, no rumor has filtered under the paneling of the Royal Swedish Academy. But for a few days now, punters, tipsters and other bootleggers have been playing guessing games by putting forward some names of possible promotions.
Also readJon Fosse, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature
Among those who top the list are the Chinese Can Xue (71), the Australian Gerald Murnane and his compatriot Alexis Wright, all three barely translated into French, followed by the American-Antiguan Jamaica Kincaid, and more seriously, from the Romanian Mircea Cartarescu (translated into French in Noir sur Blanc) and the Russian dissident Lioudmila Oulitskaïa. Also noteworthy, among the outsiders, the Korean poet Ko Un (91 years old) and the eternal unsuccessful candidates, translated all over the world, such as the Canadians Anne Carson and Margaret Atwood, and the prolific Joyce Carol Oates. Some Anglo-Saxon prognosticators also mention the chances of those they call the « dark horses »such as the Argentinian César Aira or the Hungarian Laszlo Krasznahorkai, author of Satan’s Tango and winner of the International Booker Prize in 2015.
As for the presence at the bottom of the ranking, of Houellebecq, Pierre Michon, Thomas Pynchon, who has not published anything since 2013, and even the singer Paul Simon (composer of « The Sound of Silence »), it seems that they are there not to impress the gallery, but to make simple appearances. But who knows, the Swedish Academy has already had some strange surprises in store for us.
Out of who knows what hat
Question: will the Nobel jurors have the guts and audacity to finally award their reward (amounting to 11 million Swedish crowns, or approximately 923,000 euros) to Salman Rushdie, tireless freedom fighter, still under the stroke of a fatwa, and author of around fifteen novels, after having neglected the Borges, Nabokov, Philip Roth, Ismaïl Kadaré (who died last summer), Kundera and others Jorge Amado or Yves Bonnefoy?
Furthermore, should we take our predictions at face value, which are often risky, like those of the racers? Nothing is less certain. Let’s remember that in 2016, no one saw Bob Dylan coming, coming from who knows what hat, just like Patrick Modiano, who won the cup six years after Le Clézio, in 2014.
Response on Thursday, October 10, at 1 p.m. sharp, from Stockholm.
