This year’s Nobel literature prize could go to a Chinese or a Caribbean woman when it is awarded later this week, literary critics say, in a bid to diversify an award that has most often gone to Western male authors.
There is no public shortlist for the Nobel, and with the deliberations of the Swedish Academy that awards the prize and the list of nominees remaining sealed for 50 years, Stockholm’s literary circles are engaging in frantic guessing ahead of the announcement.
The suspense will end tomorrow when the 18-member Swedish Academy reveals its pick.
Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid, 77, whose work explores Caribbean culture, family and identity as well as colonialism and race has often been mentioned in Nobel speculation, as has China’s Can Xue, whose avant- garde experimental writing has been compared to that of Kafka.
Laszlo Krasznahorkai from Hungary took home the honour last year.
Kincaid’s 1990 novel Lucy is an autobiographical tale of an embittered young girl who travels from the West Indies to the United States to work as an au pair.
“It’s exactly the kind of book where it’s enough to read three lines to say: ‘OK, we’re talking about a Nobel laureate here’,” Bjorn Wiman, culture editor at Sweden’s largest daily Dagens Nyheter, said.
Giving her the nod could also be interpreted as a political choice, given her fierce criticism of US President Donald Trump.
The Academy trod familiar ground last year when it honoured Krasznahorkai – a male writer from central Europe, of which there are many in the Nobel annals – and Wiman said the committee should “distance itself a bit” from that.
The institution has long been criticised for the over-representation of Western male authors since the prize was first awarded in 1901. There are only 18 women among the 122 laureates, and only very few have bodies of work written in Asian or Middle Eastern languages.
A 2018 sex assault scandal left the Academy in tatters, and more than half of its members ended up being replaced.
Since then, every other literature laureate has been a woman, making it likely that this year’s nod could go to a woman.
However, the Swedish Academy insists that its only consideration is the quality of a writer’s work. — AFP
