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Nobel Prize and Best Read?

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE - by G.L. Horton (5/29/02)

B writes on the humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare list: The Nobel Prize for Literature Committee is the only world-recognized authority covering all languages annually, so logically the best work of fiction should be a work by one of the following named NPL winners, unless you decide they didn't write fiction or wrote the work earlier. (Anyone who can name a published work by 5 of the 25 should get an invitation to play on Jeopardy. Anyone who can name more than 8 works, and has actually read them, should get a seat on the NPL Committee, Swedish or not.)

Surely you exaggerate? Or do you only count a fiction as "read" if it is read in the original language? Because I have read 26 works by the listed authors, and I am not a particulary avid reader of contemporary fiction and poetry. More relevantly, I have seen the plays of the 3 playwrights on the list: 7 productions of Fo, 6 of Walcott (only because he teaches in Boston and is produced here) and one of Soyinka.

I can't nominate a single "best" work. My personal favorite body of novels is Iris Murdoch's, particularly "The Sea, the Sea", "The Black Prince" "the Book and the Brotherhood" and "The Good Apprentice", but "Best"? I can't even name a Best Shakespeare Play. My favorites change as my life changes: what work could be equally relevant to all the people all the time?

 

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