At 7 pm on October 6, Beijing time, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature will announce the list of winners. This year is also the tenth anniversary of the Nobel Prize in Literature of Mo Yan . In the past ten years, which Nobel Prize winners have been born? For what reason do they win the award? Before the lottery draw, let's review it. In addition, who do you still remember these ten winners?
2012·Chinese writer Mo Yan
Award-winning comment: He integrates folk stories, historical events with contemporary society through magical realism.
Writer Profile: Mo Yan is the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. When the news came in 2012, many Chinese people were excited about it. In December of that year, Mo Yan gave a speech entitled "Storyteller" at the Swedish Academy. He said: "I am a storyteller. I won the Nobel Prize in Literature because of storytelling."
Mo Yan was born in 1955 in an ordinary peasant family in Ping'anzhuang, Heya Town, Gaomi County, Shandong Province. Since the 1980s, he has written a series of pioneering literary works full of rural style based on his hometown Gaomi as a prototype. His literary world, which takes " Gaomi Northeast Township " as a landmark, integrates stories of reality and imagination. It can not only be seen as a microcosm of Chinese society, but also extends to the living conditions of all mankind.
In 2020, Mo Yan's new work " Late-Mature People " was published. This is Mo Yan's first work after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.
representative works: novels "Red Sorghum Family", " Wine Country ", "Big Breasts and Big Buttocks", " Sandalwood Punishment ", " Life and Death Fatigue ", "Frog", etc., the short and medium-sized novels " Transparent Carrot ", "The Commander's Woman", etc., and have written many plays and prose.
2013·Canadian writer Alice Monroe
Award-winning comment: a master of contemporary short stories.
Writer Profile: In 1931, Monroe was born in Wenheim Township, Huron County, Ontario, Canada. In 1968, she published her first short story collection, "Happy Shadow Dance", and won the Canadian Governor's Literature Award. Later, she created more than a dozen works and won many awards. At the same time, her works were translated into 13 languages and spread all over the world. She is known as "Canadian Chekhov", focusing on the creation of short and medium-sized novels, telling the ordinary lives of ordinary people, especially women, and infiltrate the subtleties of human nature with delicate and thorough and calm words. Monroe is the 13th female winner in the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
representative works: " Escape from ", " Dear Life ", " A good woman's love ", "Happiness is too much", "Hate, friendship, pursuit, love, marriage", etc.
2014·French writer Patrick Modiano
Award-winning comment: He awakens the most difficult fate of mankind with the art of memory.
Writer Profile: In 1945, Modiano was born in France. In 1968, he became famous in the publication of his debut work "Platform of Stars" at Galima Publishing House. Next, "Ring City Avenue" won the French Academy Novel Award in 1972, and " Dark Shop Street " won the Goncourt Award in 1978. Modiano's novels often turn their vision back to the past through searching, investigation, memory and exploration, and describe the "disappearing" past. He is also good at using the symbolic technique , showing profound meaning through a certain image. His works have characteristics that are different from the traditional realist novel : the combination of reality and imagination, the interweaving of present and past, and the overlapping of different spaces. He often breaks the boundaries of time and space, and combines fragmented pieces of memories into the present narrative.
representative works: "Youth Cafe", "Star Square", "Star Square", "Dark Shop Street", etc.
2015·Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexeyevich
Award-winning comment: She has a work like lace fabric, and has planted a memorial garden for contemporary people.
Writer Profile: In 1948, Alexeyevich was born in Stanislav, and later moved his family to Belarus and graduated from the Department of Journalism of Minsk University. She is a very influential Russian writing female writer in the contemporary world literature.She wrote documentary literature by interviewing the parties involved, recording major events such as World War II , Afghan War, Chernobyl accident , and Soviet disintegration .
In her representative work "Handle No Women in the War ", she traveled to more than 200 villages and interviewed hundreds of Soviet women who participated in and were involved in World War II, soldiers, guerrillas and logistics personnel. The whole book consists of these interviews. The work " Zinc Doll Soldier " that describes the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan continues this style, "protesting to look at war from a male perspective."
In 2015, Sarah Daniels, executive secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy, commented on Alexeyevich as an extraordinary writer. "For the past thirty or forty years, she has been portraying individuals in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet eras." Daniels said, "But she does not tell the history of events, but the history of emotions - she presents us with an inner world, so the historical events she talks about in many works, such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the Afghan War, are actually just to explore the individual destiny of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet eras." "She interviewed thousands of children, women, and men. In this way, she presented us with historical stories of those people we don't know very well... At the same time, she also showed us the history of emotions and the history of the soul."
representative works: "No Women in War", "Zinc Skin", "The Last Witness: 101 Children Who Lost Childhood in War", "Chernobyl's Prayer", " Second-hand Time ", etc.
2016·American writer Bob Dylan
Award-winning comment: He created new forms of poetic expression in the tradition of great American music.
Writer Profile: Bob Dylan is the first musician to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Over the past half a century, he has released more than forty albums, created classic songs that have sung for generations, influenced musicians around the world, and brought lyrics into the palace of classic literature for the first time. He has won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award , the Oscar for Best Original Songs , the Golden Globe Award Best Original Songs, and the Pulitzer Prize Special Honor Award. Three years before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Literatures announced Bob Dylan as his honorary member, recognizing his contributions to American literature and music. He is also the first rock musician to be selected for the American Academy of Arts and Literatures.
For Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, Variety commented that it broke the tradition of the Nobel Prize in Literature - Traditionally, the Nobel Prize winner mainly relies on his published books, and although Bob Dylan has published a collection of poems, a collection of sketches and a memoir entitled "Chronicles: Volume 1", his main achievement is in the field of pop music. Bob Dylan's award made history, just like Churchill won the award for World War II memoirs and Russell for philosophical works.
Perhaps to prevent criticism of Dylan being largely regarded as a musician rather than a writer, the Swedish Academy also stated in a statement, “Dylan’s lyrics have been publishing new versions. In addition to his large-scale albums, Dylan has published experimental literary work, such as the essay collections Tarantula (1971) and Writings and Drawings (1973), and the autobiography Chronicles (2004), depicting popular culture centered on his life in New York in the early years. As an artist, he is amazingly versatile, active and active in painting, acting and writing.”
Even so, many people are not buying the award, including Dylan himself. In his award speech to the Swedish Academy of Literature through audio links, he said, "The lyrics are something to be sung, not to exist for reading. I hope you can listen to the songs and let the works be listened to in the form they were originally expected."
representative works: "The answer flutters in the wind", "Under the red sky", "Like a rolling stone", "The times are changing", etc.
2017·Japanese British writer Ishiguro Kazuo
Award-winning comment: He found the connection between the real world and the illusory abyss in the world of great emotions.
Writer Profile: In 1954, Ishiguro Kazuo was born in Nagasaki, Japan. He immigrated to the UK with his parents at the age of 5. He began publishing novels in 1983, and his works have been translated into more than fifty languages. Among them, the British versions of "The Long Day Is Going to End" and "Don't Lose and Don't Forget" sold more than one million copies, and were remade into a movie, which was widely praised. In 2018, Ishiguro Kazuo was named jazz by the Queen of England for his outstanding contributions in the field of literature. He is also the recipient of the French Knight of Art and Literature and the Japanese Rising Sun Shigehiro Chapter. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has also won many important literary awards, including the British Booker Prize, and is known as the "Three Heroes of Immigration in the British Literature" together with Rusidi and Naipaul.
Ishiguro's works mainly involve the following categories of topics: memory, time and self-deception. Sarah Daniels, executive secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy, once described Ishiguro's works as a mixture of Jane Austen and Franz Kafka. "But you have to add a little Marcel Proust and stir it a little to get his style." She also commented on Ishiguro Kazuo: "He is a very upright writer. He not only sees one side of things, he has developed the entire universe of beauty alone."
Although he has a dual cultural background in Japan and Britain, Ishiguro Kazuo is one of the very few Asian writers who do not specialize in immigration or national identity as novel subjects. He is committed to writing novels that can make sense for people living within any cultural background. In terms of the novel's story, Ishiguro Kazuo showed a rich creative span. He continues to explore new areas of story and wanders around the boundaries of traditional history and future life. In 2021, his new work "Clara and the Sun" features AI as the protagonist, trying to examine the present with the future world. The core of the novel continues his exploration of memory, human nature, etc.
representative works: "The distant mountains and clear scenery", "Don't lose and forget", "The painter of the air world", "The long day is about to end", "Clara and the Sun", etc.
2018·Polish writer Olga Tokarchuk
Award-winning comment: Her narrative is full of encyclopedia-style passion and imagination, presenting a life form that transcends boundaries.
Writer Profile: Tokarchuk was born in Poland in 1962 and graduated from the Department of Psychology of the University of Warsaw. Later, he worked in the Mental Health Counseling Institute in Waubujik, southwestern Poland border town. In 1989, he became a literary world with his collection of poems "City in the Mirror". Tokarchuk is good at combining elements such as folk legends, myths, religious stories in his works to observe Poland's history and human life. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, she has won the Nike Prize for Authoritative Literature Award in Poland twice for "Cloud Travel" and "Book of Jacob", and was nominated for the Nike Prize six times; in 2018, "Cloud Travel" won the Booker International Prize; in 2019, "Book of Jacob" won the French Jur Barteyong Prize, and in the same year, "Minero Bone" was shortlisted for the Booker International Prize shortlist. The movie adapted by the novel "Minero Bone" won the Afred Ball Prize at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival.
representative works: " Ancient and Other Times ", "House in the Day, House at Night", "Anna Yin in the World's Grave", "Cloud Travel", "The Soil of the Milk Bone", "Book of Jacob", "Warlock", "The Ugliest Woman in the World", "Gratious Story Collection", "Dolls and Pearls", etc.
2019·Austrian writer Peter Handker
Award-winning comment: His works with linguistic talents explore the periphery and particularity of human experience.
Writer Profile: Handke was born in Austria in 1942 and joined the University of Graz to study law in 1961. At the age of 24, he published his first novel "Bumblebee", before which he had dropped out of school to concentrate on his creation. In the same year, he published the script "Criticize the Audience", which made him famous in one fell swoop, which caused an unprecedented sensation in the German literary world.The "Casper" he created is comparable to the " Waiting for Godot " by Beckett. He is also known as a master of creating "talking drama" and anti-linguistic discipline. In addition to literary creation, " Under the Berlin Sky" written by Handker and Wenders has also become a classic in film history. The movie "Left-handed Woman" directed by him was nominated for Best Picture at the Cannes Film Festival. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, he won the 1973 Bishina Prize, the 2009 Kafka Prize in Literature and the 2014 International Ibsen Prize.
representative works: "The goalkeeper's anxiety reappears when facing a penalty kick", "The tragedy of desirelessness", "Left-handed woman", "Caspar", "Moments of strangers", etc.
2020·American writer Louise Greck
Award-winning comment: Her irrefutable poetic voice makes personal existence universal with simple beauty.
Writer Profile: Greck was born in 1943 in a Hungarian Jewish family. He published his virgin poetry collection "The First Born of a Son" in 1968. He has written twelve collections of poems and an essay collection, and has won various poetry awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Award, the Wallace Stevens Prize, the American Academy of Poets, and the Paulingen Prize. Greck's poems are good at grasping the subtleties of psychology. His early works are very autobiographical, while later works guide the fundamental problems of human existence, such as love, death, life, and destruction through confrontation between man and gods and psychological analysis of mythological characters. Since "Aleshan", each of her poetry collections has been exquisite texture, which can be used as a long poem or as a group of poems. Starting from "All Mountain" and "Wild Iris", Greck became a "must-read poet."
However, the result of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature sparked heated discussion that year. One of the major reasons is that this is the Nobel Prize in Literature twice awarded to American poets within five years. Anders Olsen, chairman of the Swedish Academy's Nobel Prize for Literature, said that all Grick's works are characterized by the pursuit of clarity, children and family life. Intimacy with her parents and siblings has always been her central theme, and even if her personal background is important, Greck cannot be seen as a poet who is purely concerned with herself. She seeks inspiration in the universe, mythology and classical motivations. Meanwhile, Greck's work touches on a grand topic, whether radical changes in society come from a profound sense of loss. In this world filled with different voices, this layer of thinking is particularly precious.
representative works: " Until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul ", "Moonlight alloy", "Night of Loyalty", etc.
2021·Tanzanian-American British writer Abdul Razak Gurna
Award-winning comment: His influence on colonial literature and his uncompromising and compassionate insight into the situation of refugees in the cracks of different cultures.
Writer Profile: Gurna was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 1948 and moved to the UK as a refugee in the 1960s. He is not only a novelist, but also a literary researcher. He served as a professor of English at the University of Kent and served as a member of the advisory board of the literary magazine Wasafiri after retirement.
Since the 1980s, he has published more than a dozen novels and some short stories. His works revolve around the theme of refugees, mainly describe the survival status of the colonial people, focusing on identity, racial conflicts and historical writing. Although Swahili is his first language, English is still his main writing language. The official Nobel Prize tweet once stated that Gurner's persistence in the truth and opposition to simplified thinking are admirable. His novels abandon stereotyped descriptions and allow people to see the multicultural East African that people from many other parts of the world are unfamiliar with.
representative works: " Paradise ", "The Seaside", "The Afterlife", "Praise Silence", "The Last Gift", etc.
