I've just been looking at the list of Nobel Lit winners for the past 20 odd years and it's a bit of a shock to realise just how many of them I've never read, and yes, a few I've never heard of, despite reading on average around 20 novels a year etc.
I have read and do like Patrick Modiano a lot (won in 2014) but I've never read any Svetlana Alexievich (2015), Mo Yan (2012), Herta Muller (2009), Imre Kertesz (2002), Jose Saramago (1998) or Wislawa Szymborsca (1996). I have read some and not liked them very much, Orphan Pamuk I think is very overrated and I never liked Naipaul. Also found Gao Xinglian quite boring. Of the the others over that period the ones I particularly like are Le Clezio, Lessing, Pinter, Grass and Fo. I've never heard of Elfriede Jelinek (2004) but she sounds really interesting - any pointers anyone?
Cheers
Tim
On 18 Oct 2016, at 14:36, David Lace wrote:
> Yes, in comparison to the cultural importance Dylan has had for the past 50 or so years. The writers you mention as winning seem like jobbing writers who got lucky. Gone are the greats in literature.
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> Jamie McKendrick wrote:
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> David, you describe the Nobel choices of the past 10 years as 'pretty inconsequential poets and writers'. Apart from Muller, mainly famed as a novelist, the only poets who've won in the last decade are Szymborska and Transtromer (can't do umlauts on this device). Would you seriously call them inconsequential?
> Other writers include Coetzee, Vargas Llosa, Lessing, Kertesz, Saramago - 'pretty inconsequential' - really?
> Jamie
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