Award
Nobel Prize in Literature announced
The French writer Annie Ernaux, recorded before a reading at the Lit. Cologne. photo
© Horst Galuschka/dpa
When what is probably the world’s most important literary prize is awarded, the world looks towards Stockholm for a moment. There are many potential candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
After the Nobel Prizes in medicine, physics and chemistry, the highlight for the literary world follows: Today it is decided who will receive the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. The Swedish Academy will no earlier than 1.00 p.m. in the old town of Stockholm to announce who will receive the world’s most prestigious literary award this time. In the two previous years, the academy had caused surprises – and this time?
There were 233 candidates on the so-called long list for the award this year – which names are among them is kept top secret every year. The speculation about the possible winner or the possible winner boils up accordingly, the closer the announcement gets.
Betting shops recently counted Frenchman Michel Houellebecq, Canadian Anne Carson, Frenchwoman Annie Ernaux and Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie among their closest favorites. In view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, a prize for a Ukrainian author or the Russian critic Lyudmila Ulitzkaja, who has been in Berlin since the spring – after the Russian invasion of Ukraine – is also considered possible.
surprises in recent years
However, the Swedish Academy is notorious for not being guided by public speculation. A year ago, she surprisingly awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to the – until then – relatively unknown Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah. He was honored “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the ramifications of colonialism and the plight of the fugitive across the divide between cultures and continents”. The year before, the prize had gone to the US poet Louise Glück – she was not previously considered one of the many favorites.
This year’s Nobel Prize winners in the categories of medicine, physics and chemistry have already been announced in the past few days. The literary award will be followed on Friday by the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, the only one not to be held in Stockholm but in Oslo. The announcement in the economics category rounds off the annual Nobel prize round on Monday.
All Nobel prizes this year are endowed with ten million Swedish crowns per category. Converted, this corresponds to almost 920,000 euros. The prestigious awards are traditionally presented on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of prize donor and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).