In a competitive field which included Syrian poet Adonis, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, there triumphed Patrick Modiano. Born two months after the conclusion of World War II in a suburb of Paris, his Italian-Jewish father’s relationship with his Belgian actress mother during the Nazi occupation of France has heavily influenced Modiano’s stories. His first published work, “La Place d’Etoile” (1968), is regarded as a monumental “Post-Holocaust” work. All of his books follow a common thread of Jewish identity and life under occupation. Essential reads include: “La Ronde de Nuit” (1969), “Voyage de Noces” (1990), “Dora Bruder” (1997), and the screenplay for the 1974 film “Lacombe, Lucien.”
At the tender age of 82, the “master of the contemporary short story,” according to the Nobel academy, Alice Munro, became the 13th woman and the second Canadian to nab the award. Born in Ontario in 1931, Munro’s stunning body of work includes over 14 short story collections, the most recently published being “Dear Life” in 2012. A New Yorker short fiction section darling, her writings explore many heavy-handed themes in a very soft manner: fate, betrayal, jealousy, marriage, murder, and more. Beheaded ghosts come back to visit, a fake priest molests a young lady on a bus ride across Canada, a family’s lineage from Scotland to Canada is dissected, and the Gods of fate keep spinning around her characters and, as she’d like to remind, all of us.
Otherwise known as Guan Moye, Chinese short story scribe and novelist Yan has been called the Kafka of his country. His prize came from the Swedish academy in 2012, honoring an author “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary” (Nobelprize.org). Born in 1955 to farmers, he was forced by circumstances relating to the Cultural Revolution to leave school at the age of 12 and work in the fields. He published his first novel in 1981, but it wasn’t until 1987’s work “Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang jiazu),” about the horrors of the 1930 Japan invasion of China, that Yan received thunderous acclaim. His works usually consist of peasant life, survival, and brief magical departures from incredibly violent moments in Chinese history. He is the first and only Chinese winner of the Nobel Literature prize.
Not since 1974 had a Swede been awarded the gold, and not since 1996 had a poet won the Literature prize. “Because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality,” (Nobelprize.org), Tranströmer was born in Stockholm in 1931, and worked as a psychologist for young criminal offenders before publishing his first collection in college, “17 Dikter (17 Poems)”. His works analyze all of the joys and pains of life, as well his travels through Spain, Africa, and the war-torn Balkans. “Sorgegondolen (The Sorrow)” was published in 1996 after he suffered a massive stroke in 1990 which impaired his ability to talk. He is called a “buzzard poet”: one who views the world from circling above it.
“For his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat” (Nobelprize.org), Peruvian writer and infamous nemesis of Gabriel García Marquéz, Llosa published his first novel “The Time of the Hero” in 1963. He followed with great successes that helped skyrocket South American literature as some of the world’s most revered, such as “Conversation in the Cathedral” (1969) and his proclaimed masterpiece “The Feast of the Goat” (2000). Also once a controversial politician, Llosa ran for a right wing reform presidential position in 1987, losing in the second round. His famous brawl in a Mexican movie theater with Márquez ended their friendship, although Llosa’s study of his old friend was published in a 40th anniversary edition of “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
Nobel’s permanent secretary Peter Englund said this about German author Müller: “She has been living in a dictatorship which constantly misused and abused language, and this has forced a sort of scepticism in her regarding the use of words, the use of language.” (Guardian). Born in Romania in 1953, she was a teacher under the brutal Communist regime of Ceausescu; when she refused to cooperate with his secret Securitate police, Müller lost her job and received numerous death threats until she fled to Germany in 1987. Her novels reflect the horrors of the life she left: “Herztier” or, as published in English “The Land of Green Plums” is widely considered her magnum opus. Other towering achievements include “Hunger und Seide (Hunger and Silk)” (1995) and “Atemschaukel (Everything I Possess, I Carry with Me)” (2009).
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was honored by then-permanent secretary of the Nobel judges as an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation.” (Guardian). A British father from Mauritius, French-born Le Clézio has spent his entire writing career exploring far-off cultures, living in foreign cities and discovering lyricism in out-of-mind situations. “Le Procès-Verbal” was published in 1963 when he was only 23 years old; that book and 1980’s “Désert” were runaway, award-winning sensations in Europe. Le Clézio has lived in Mexico City, Boston, England, Bangkok, and for four years with the Embera Indians in Panama. His novel “Voyage de l’autre côté” (1975) explores that special time.
Stunning Doris Lessing, British-born and with select works of earthshattering, neo-colonial impact was given the award for embodying “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” (Nobelprize.org). Born in Iran (then Persia) in 1919, she moved with her family to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in 1925, and witnessed her father’s attempt at farming fail. She subsequently moved to Britain, and in 1950 her angry debut novel about racism in colonized Zimbabwe “The Grass is Singing” created a monumental stir across the globe, especially for its very suggestive eroticism. Other successes include “The Golden Notebook” (1962) and “Memoirs of a Survivor” (1974). Watch her hilarious reaction on Youtube to her being informed of her Nobel nab.
Turkish wordsmith Pamuk, “Who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures” (Nobelprize.org), is both revered and scathed, but undoubtedly an incredible writer of time, place, and memories. He achieved widespread critical and commercial success with “Istanbul: Memories and the City” (2003), a treasure chest of his experience growing up in one of the world’s oldest, yet most rapidly modernizing cities. There are novels as well: “The Black Book” (1990), “My Name is Red” (2001), and “Snow” (2004). In 2006, A Turkish court dropped charges against him which came about after “insulting Turkishness,” after he told a Swiss newspaper: “Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” (Guardian).
The indisputably great British playwright Pinter was awarded for his work spanning over half a century. Raised in a lower-class neighborhood in London, he refused at age 18 to enlist in the army after witnessing the destruction of his city by German planes. His first great stageplay was “The Caretaker” (1960), which followed with perhaps his most lauded achievement, “The Homecoming” (1965), traveling to Broadway and winning Pinter his only Tony Award. “Betrayal” (1978) is studied in thousands of drama classes across the world. He also branched out into film, writing the screenplays for “The Servant” (1963) and the adaptation of “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981).
