2010 Nobel Prize for Literature

Margaret Atwood

THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE has come a long way since French poet Sully Prudhomme was awarded the inaugural prize in 1901. Albert Camus won it at the age of 43 in 1957. Novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio became the first French-language author in some 23 years to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008. British playwright Harold Pinter won the prize in 2005, the first Briton to win the literature award since V.S. Naipaul won it in 2001, while Orhan Pamuk was awarded the prize in 2006 for his contribution to World Literature with a consistent body of work, both fiction and nonfiction, the first ever Turkish writer to win the prize. And Günter Grass and Derek Walcott got theirs in 1999 and 1992 respectively. J.M. Coetzee got his in 2003. Doris Lessing and Herta Müller received theirs in 2007 and 2009 respectively. Despite what we may think, the Nobel Prize is still considered by many to be the highest accolade for writers.

Amos Oz

So, who will it be for 2010? A couple of candidates easily come to mind: Adonis, Chinua Achebe, Isabel Allende, Aharon Appelfeld, Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Yves Bonnefoy, Peter Carey, Don DeLillo, Assia Djebar, E.L. Doctorow, Umberto Eco, Per Olov Enquist, Nuruddin Farah, Carlos Fuentes, Peter Handke, Geoffrey Hill, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Ismail Kadare, Milan Kundera, Claudio Magris, Amin Maalouf, David Malouf, Javier Marías, Cormac McCarthy, Mo Yan, Paul Muldoon, Harry Mulisch, Alice Munro, Gerald Murnane, Les Murray, Michael Ondaatje, Amos Oz, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Antonio Tabucchi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Tomas Tranströmer, Michel Tournier, Barry Unsworth, Mario Vargas Llosa and A.B. Yehoshua. Paul Auster, A.S. Byatt, Anita Desai, Richard Ford, Mary Gordon, David Grossman, Elias Khoury, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon and William Trevor are also worthy choices. Who else should be shortlisted?

PAST NOBEL WINNERS
2000 Gao Xingjian
2001 V.S. Naipaul
2002 Imre Kertész
2003 John M. Coetzee
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2005 Harold Pinter
2006 Orhan Pamuk
2007 Doris Lessing
2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
2009 Herta Müller
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa

Philip Roth

The Swedish Academy will announce the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature on October 7, 2010