In addition to the riches available these days in all types of fiction, there is a lot going on in the literary world. Here's a bit of what's up:
The Nobel Committee that awards the literature prize did not do so last year because of a sexual harassment scandal. There was talk that the committee would not be as Eurocentric in future. So last week, a woman from Poland and a man from Austria won the prizes. The woman, Olga Tokarczuk, wrote the novel featured here earlier this fall, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
As Ruth Franklin noted in The New Yorker, she also has embraced Poland's far more complicated history than what the right-wing power structure would have its own people believe:
In Poland, a narrative of history that embraces fragmentation, diversity, and intermingling is unavoidably political, disrupting a long-standing mythology of the country as a homogeneous Catholic nation. ...
In a recent Op-Ed that appeared in the Times, Tokarczuk deplored her country’s political climate: “State television, from which a significant number of Poles get their news, consistently smears, in aggressive and defamatory language, the political opposition and anyone who thinks differently from the ruling party.”
The New Yorker article also has some background about how Poland and Ukraine are entwined.
But the man who was honored, Peter Handke, is a genocide apologist. In an opinion piece published in The Guardian, war correspondent Ed Vulliamy wrote:
Handke was not just expressing his opinion in his book A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia and his homily at Milošević’s funeral – he went out of his way to give credence to mass murder and, in this context, as importantly, to lies. He offered to testify for Milošević at The Hague ...
It's beyond irony that Handke was honored, as the inscription for the prize is adapted from Virgil, and uses language of improving human life through "discovered arts".
Other Nobel winners have been at least this disgraceful (thinking especially of Henry Kissinger). But when so many groups of people are under such horrific attacks, and a new genocide is possible right now because of Trump and Turkey, this award is especially galling. So much for winning back respect, Nobel committee.
Elsewhere, the New Yorker also has a recent article about Haruki Murakami and his memories of his father. It has many connections to his writings, and is well worth the time of anyone who has enjoyed his work. Once again, I was disappointed that the Nobel was not award to him this year.
Just as great damage is done to the world through writing, so is great healing and privilege in the positive sense of the word. So it is with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. As a part of PEN America's tribute to Morrison, Zadie Smith wrote:
Toni Morrison put herself in the service of her people, as few writers have ever been called upon to do, and she claimed it as a privilege.
That is indeed greatness. Let us look for that greatness whenever we can, especially in days such as these.
In other dual winner news, the Booker was awarded to two writers this week. The judges had to fight for their decision, but they were allowed to name both Margaret Atwood and Bernadine Evaristo this year’s winners. Atwood’s The Testaments is her follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale as both the real world and TV show based on the original novel have influenced her. Evaristo wrote Girl, Woman, Other as a way to keep black British women from being invisible. To have both award winners focus on what women face makes the Booker far more relevant than the Nobel.