Nobel prizes are great again. Although neither Houellebecq nor Murakami won – News List

The Nobel Prize for Literature used to be very heavy from the point of view of a cultural editor. There was no way to prepare for her. At most, before the announcement, broadcast somewhere inside the building of the Swedish Academy, write a few paragraphs about the history of the prize and about the authors for whom the bettors predicted the prize and which was terribly wrong. No Kundernone Murakamiyears Roderick or Houellebecq. Nothing could be predicted, except that the favorites would definitely not get the prize.

In recent years, it has been distinguished by the Nobel Prize for Literature. The anxiety of the cultural editor alternates with concentration, worry and pleasant surprise. When the academy honored the work of South Korean Han Kang on Thursday, it was a real surprise. But it is not as surprising as the award that was once for the completely unknown Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah. Amazing in style: the award goes to someone whose work I know is very interesting and very relevant.

This may have been a result of the 2018 scandal, when it was revealed that sexual abuse and other power practices were rampant in the highly secretive world of Swedish academics. Since then, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been trying to lose the aura of mystery and instead become clearer and more understandable.

It didn’t start going well right away. See Peter Handke, controversial author supporting genocide. Or the aforementioned completely unknown Abdulrazak Gurnah. Since then, however, it has become more common for the academy to honor writers who are discussed.

a French novelist Ann Ernaux (awarded in 2022) and Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse (awarded in 2023) have been publishing works for decades, but both caught the attention of the literary world thanks to translations into English shortly before they became laureates. While the most important novels of Ernaux’s career were published gradually, Fosse published one large, thousand-page Septology text. You could guess that they have a good chance for the prestigious award. After all, both appeared on the bookies’ lists – albeit well below Michel Houellebecq or Salman Rushdie. And finally: Both Fosse and Ernaux were published in English translation in blue paper usually by the publishing house of Fitzcarraldo.

The predictability and transparency of the Nobel Prizes is good. Mostly from the point of view of a cultural editor. It is much more important that the prestigious prize for literature goes to authors who are worth reading. Olga Tokarczuk (awarded 2019) flirts with genres such as science fiction or horrorshe loves literary notes, and although she should be an unshakable stand of the canon, she likes to make fun of it. She is brutal, funny, political.

John Fosse he writes prose in endless sentences, remembers records of dreams – it may seem like a great challenge to a reader, but whoever overcomes the initial fear of looking at a page full of text , he discovers that he understands Fosse’s language perfectly. And that he had rarely encountered such a detailed and accurate record of his own subconscious. Plus the atmosphere – fjords, cabins, Scandinavian weather. And the humor of the aging Norway fern. When will Fosse’s plays, which critics say are among the best that contemporary theater can offer, begin to be performed again in the Czech Republic?

And finally Han Kang. The second youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who has many important works ahead of her after the extraordinary success of The Vegetarian. I remember being amazed by her imagination and formal experimentation when I opened Where the Grass Blooms to find that forgotten part of the story of the 1980 Gwangju student massacre told by a bunch of dead bodies . And that the pile of bodies worries me as a reader. It was a disturbing, powerfully cathartic experience.

The Nobel Prizes Houellebecq or Murakami need not be relevant again. Instead, they are now looking for the reader’s willingness to broaden their horizons. Not to be afraid of names that do not mean anything to us at first glance, not to be afraid of topics that seem very unusual or perhaps too heavy.

As for Han Kang, one doesn’t even have to try hard to broaden one’s horizons – her most famous prose of the moment, the already mentioned Vegetarian, is available in Czech translation today. Another novel in Czech translation should be published in half a year. Two books already translated into Czech (Kde kvete trava, Bílá kniha) will definitely be reprinted.

As for older authors, Olga Tokarczuk and Annie Ernaux are regularly published by the publishing house Host. We can only hope that someone is currently translating Fosse’s Septology and preparing new editions of his novels and plays that were published here in the 1990s and 1990s. In the meantime, you can pass the time with his novel To je Ales, which was published in Czech this year. There are 88 pages. It won’t be pain. So if the text doesn’t make you cry like it did to me.

If the Nobel Prizes for literature sent any message, you don’t have to fear its winners anymore.