MESSAGES

Please feel free to leave messages and questions for the group here.

Thanks for taking the initiative: this seems like a fun idea! I’ve read quite a few Nobelists over the years, but I’ve no real idea how many, and it would be nice to focus on the gaps a bit. I’ll set up a list when I can get to a real computer. Maybe when more people get involved we could also do a master list to keep track of the winners none of us have read.

I will be joining too. Like Mark above, I'm not sure how many Nobelists I've read, but I know I've read a fair number. I'll set up a thread, probably after Christmas when the kids leave.
I'm not sure how to do links, but several years ago I moderated a quarter long read of Nobelists in the Reading Globally Group. I did quite a bit of research, and if someone knows how it might be a good thing to link to over here.

>2 thorold: That's a great idea, Mark, to list the laureates no one has read. Although after reading Deborah's comments on the RG thread, maybe there's a good reason to skip some of them!

>3 arubabookwoman: Thanks for this, Deborah. The link to the Reading Globally theme read from 2015 is Nobel Laureates Writing in a Language Other Than English. There is a WEALTH of information here. I encourage everyone to bookmark the page.

There's also a "Nobel Laureates in Literature" group, but it's dormant: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/5264/Nobel-Laureates-in-Literature

>5 lilithcat: Thanks, Lilith. I did see that group, but since it had been dormant since 2014 and I wasn't the admin, I thought I would start fresh. It's good reference though.

While I don't feel right now like I have enough interest to create a thread here, I will follow the group to see if any books or authors strike my fancy. I looked through your list and have read books by about 20 of the authors. Great idea!

>7 japaul22: That's fine, follow along as you wish. Although I have not been actively attacking this challenge, I have been keeping a list since 2014. So far I've read 36/119 or 30%. I should get a few more this year with the African Novel challenge.

I will follow this group with interest! One of my numerous ongoing challenges is to read a selected work by Nobel laureates who were novelists. So far I have read works by Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Rudyard Kipling.

Next up will be Selma Lagerlöf: I am planning to read her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, for my challenge.

Hi lyzard, I'm curious as to which Sienkiewicz you read. I read Quo Vadis but would like to get to With Fire and Sword. Will you start a thread here, or do you have your Nobel list elsewhere?

>10 labfs39:

My Nobel reading is just one of my many (too many!) self-challenges: I just write it up as I go over at my thread in the 75ers group. I will post here with a link when I get a book reviewed, but that will probably only be each month or every two months.

I had read Quo Vadis? for a different challenge (swynn / Steve and I are reading the best-selling American books together), so for this challenge I did read With Fire And Sword: my review of it is here.

>11 lyzard: Thanks for that, lyzard. While reading your review, I was struck by how similar With Fire and Sword sounds to Taras Bulba, except from the opposite perspective. I just read TB this year. As you may know, it covers the same time period and also features a siege.

>12 labfs39:

I came across that very information when I was reading With Fire And Sword and picked up a copy of Taras Bulba the last time I was at the library. Sienkiewicz is often considered now to be on the wrong side of history, so I was curious to see what Gogol did with the Cossack side of the situation.

>13 lyzard: Sienkiewicz is often considered now to be on the wrong side of history

I find that interesting. As I was reading Gogol, with his mythologizing of the Cossacks as the proto-Russian, Putin was invading the Ukraine. Putin and his ilk probably buy into that myth, as it bolsters Russia's claim to the territory. I'm not sure Gogol was on the right side of history either (although I guess it depends on who is interpreting the history). I wonder who was writing about that time period from the "right side" of history.

>14 labfs39:

I did find it uncomfortable in a way to be reading in this area just now. But if Gogol mythologises the Cossacks, Siekiewicz does the same for the Polish aristocrats (the officer class, not the ruling class per se), so I think it's highly likely they were both wrong.

Which is history for you! :)

>15 lyzard: LOL. So true. I will look for your review of Taras Bulba when you get to it.

There are seven people who've set up threads here so far. Just for fun, I've tried to work out who are the Nobelists no-one claims to have read as yet. By my count there are 37:

1901 Sully Prudhomme
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1904 Frédéric Mistral
1904 José Echegaray
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck
1915 Romain Rolland
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup
1917 Henrik Pontoppidan
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1924 Władysław Reymont
1927 Henri Bergson
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1953 Winston Churchill
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1960 Saint-John Perse
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias
1974 Eyvind Johnson
1974 Harry Martinson
1975 Eugenio Montale
1977 Vicente Aleixandre
1979 Odysseas Elytis
1984 Jaroslav Seifert
1985 Claude Simon
1996 Wisława Szymborska
2011 Tomas Tranströmer
2020 Louise Glück

(Several of these are marked as on the TBR by one or more of us.)

At the other extreme, all seven of us claim to have read Albert Camus and John Steinbeck, whilst all but one have read Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Bashevis Singer, William Golding, John Maxwell Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro.

>17 thorold: Interesting, Mark. I'm mucking up the works by not having read Mann or Coetzee. I need to get on the stick!

>17 thorold:

As mentioned above, I am not having a separate thread for this reading as it is just one challenge among many that I'm working on. :)

However, I did read Bjornstjerne Bjornson's Synnøve Solbakken to begin this challenge; my review is here.

Next up for me is Selma Lagerlöf: I will be reading Gosta Berling's Saga, but to get a hard copy I need to request it from an academic library so I'm not sure when I will get to it. I will also be reading Lagerlöf's Körkarlen for a different purpose.

>17 thorold: I have not set up a thread, and have not decided if I will, but I see a few names here that I could tick off. Roger Martin du Gard as I have read all the Thibault series a few years back (when I dropped from LT for a while, so I reviewed only the beginning of the series).
And I would recommand reading Miguel Angel Asturias. The first book I read from him, The President was great (and pre LT-time).

>20 raton-liseur: Thanks, yes, I’m already lined up to read The President very shortly as well. @arubabookwoman said in her thread that she’s got several of the listed laureates on the shelf, and I’ve also got Johnson & Martinson on the TBR, plus an essay collection by Louise Glück, so we should be able to cross a few more off between us.

Well, I'm going to have to set up a thread, aren't I! Just to appease my Fear Of Missing Out...

Lol, Dilara

>22 Dilara86: Done!
>23 labfs39: ;-)

>17 thorold: You can cross out the following authors:
Frédéric Mistral - Provençal poetry in the public domain - recommended;
Henrik Pontoppidan - I read his novella Le visiteur royal a couple of weeks ago;
Gabriela Mistral - nature and religious poetry, some with saphic overtones;
Giorgos Seferis - I read one novel, one poetry collection, wasn't bowled over;
Wisława Szymborska , Tomas Tranströmer and Louise Glück - one poetry collection each. I enjoyed them very much and mean to read more from them.

>17 thorold: Interesting tracking - who will be left at year end?
I haven't finished adding in the authors I've read, but none of them are on the unclaimed list.

>17 thorold: Nice job, doing those statistics.

I was just about to post the other day that I do not read much of the Nobel winners and ended up reading a story by one of them. So decided to start a thread - still under construction. I think I will post the reviews of the ones I had read earlier (and had reviews of) and see about writing some missing reviews...

Of course, almost anything pre-2010 is lost to time... most notably Churchill I suspect :)

>25 SassyLassy: >27 AnnieMod: I was thinking Churchill might well be one of the unclaimed at the end of the year. Nothing wrong with reading Churchill, of course, but he doesn’t really have any of the qualities that make exploring Nobelists interesting for people like us. He’s almost certainly going to be exactly what we expect him to be, whilst someone with a name like Salvatore Quasimodo or Karl Adolph Gjellerup is going to be something of an exotic mystery up to the moment you start reading them.

>28 thorold: I have half a shelf of Churchill so...

I don't read him for his prose but I find most of his writing fascinating as history.

Han Kang was The Chosen One this year. The first Korean to get the prize :-) Anybody here read her? I'd wishlisted Human Acts and know that The Vegetarian was a bestseller, but she wasn't on my radar as a possible Nobel Prize winner. So, for me, another author to explore...

>30 Dilara86: I have not read anything by her yet. Another surprise winner.

It’s a disturbing sign of age when the Nobel winners start getting younger … but I’m sure she’s a worthy winner. Human acts was a powerful novel, although I found it very uncomfortable reading.

She is on the younger side, isn't she. There aren't many winners under sixty.

The 2025 Nobel laureate should be announced in a couple of days! Who would you like to see win?

>34 Dilara86: I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Gerald Murnane!

I've had Inland in my wishlist since 2019: I'd definitely have to read it if he gets the prize!
I'd prefer it if it went to an author out of the Anglo, Franco and Scandi spheres, but really, as long as it's not Houellebecq (who put him in the bookmakers list?!), I'm happy.

I doubt that he would win, given the current political climate, but my first choice would be the Israeli author and peace activist David Grossman. Sadly the expatriate Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o died earlier this year, making him ineligible for the prize.

>35 thorold: Interesting choice!

>34 Dilara86: I'm having difficulty with this, as everyone I contemplate is either dead or has won already.

Ismail Kadare should have won any of the fifteen times he was nominated, but it's too late now.

Perhaps Antonio Muñoz Molina is a thought, even though that keeps things in Europe.

I do like it when the award is a total surprise, and suddenly we are introduced to a new writer from Country X. Looking at it like that, maybe there is someone from Brazil who is in contention.

From today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/08/can-xue-and-laszlo-krasznahorkai-a...

I see Murnane is there at 16/1 odds.

>39 SassyLassy: Yes, it does seem to be more or less the same list of names as last year they re talking about. It would be nice if they picked someone interesting we haven’t heard of. Murnane deserves to be better known, but I don’t think he really presses the right buttons for the Nobel. Too determinedly provincial. He probably wouldn’t even leave Victoria to collect his prize.

Of course, it must be awfully tempting for them to give the literature prize to a certain self-nominated candidate for the Peace Prize for his “consistently outstanding contributions to fiction in the public sphere”…

If all goes well, we should have a name in less than three hours now!

I agree that both Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Ismail Kadaré should have had the prize.

>38 SassyLassy: I do like it when the award is a total surprise, and suddenly we are introduced to a new writer from Country X.
So do I. And I also like it when it is given to an author I've read and enjoy :-) There is a bit of tension there. For example, if Margaret Atwood were to get it this year, I'd be very happy, but at the same time, I'd feel it was a missed opportunity to shed light on a writer who might need it more than her.

>40 thorold:
Of course, it must be awfully tempting for them to give the literature prize to a certain self-nominated candidate for the Peace Prize for his “consistently outstanding contributions to fiction in the public sphere”…
LOL You'd have to agree that his writing style is... a bit of an acquired taste.

Aaand the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to László Krasznahorkai! Thoughts?
I am underwhelmed. I've only read The Melancholy of Resistance and didn't feel the need to read any more from him. Should I try again?

I wasn’t bowled over by the only one I’ve read, The world goes on.

I read Satantango just under a year ago, and thought it was well done, but it reminded me of an earlier version of the story, better done. It bothers me that I can't think who did it, but I suspect it was a Russian author, with a little bit of folk tale thrown in.

Not sure I would actively seek another book by him, but if one magically crossed my path, I would probably read it. How's that for tepid?

>41 Dilara86: I wasn't on the Margaret Atwood bandwagon for somewhat similar reasons to those mentioned by >40 thorold: about Murnane.

>40 thorold: Too funny about your literature citation, but should the Peace Prize fall into his lap, I'm not sure where the depths of my despair will be. I keep telling myself they must already have someone else lined up.

>44 SassyLassy: should the Peace Prize fall into his lap, I'm not sure where the depths of my despair will be

Thank goodness we escaped that fate.

I had not even heard of László Krasznahorkai, so I was looking forward to a new author. From the universal ambivalence, I'm less inclined to hurry.