Mo Yan sold out...

With Mo Yan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2012, his books are selling like hot cakes. Within half an hour after the announcement was made, his books were sold out in China. 

 Mo's novel "Big Breasts & Wide Hips", which has been translated by Howard Goldblatt into English, narrates the tale of a mother, who goes through a period of intense struggle and numerous hardships; and also talks about the intertwined fates with Chinese people in the 20th century. One of Mo Yan's more recent work 'Frog' has quite explicitly and openly criticized his country, China's one-child family policy. This policy is said to have aided in controlling China's population explosion on the one side but on the flip side has spelled doom for the rural residents in the span of past 60 years. 

It is as if there is complete turn of tide in the direction of Mo Yan. First of all, is the 'sold out' tag that he earned within half an hour of his being declared as the winner of the most coveted literary prize, Nobel Prize in Literature - 2012. Second, it has been decided that his short novel, 'A Transparent Carrot', written in the year 1985, will be studied by senior students of high schools as part of their school curriculum. the novella describes the lives and inner worlds of ordinary Chinese people with the backdrop being countryside. The novella is famous for Mo's stylistic features used in writing. And it is for this very reason that it gained fame very quickly when it was published. The books boasts of sharp descriptions that are covered in fantastical light by the author. 

Some important points that need to be pondered upon by all the readers in every part of the world: Why does an author need to win a prize to get noticed and read? Why is that the author, who has been called as a man "who has no principles", is suddenly fit to be read in schools?

Nobel Prize in Literature 2012

The Permanent Secratary Press Release 11 October, 2012 The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 Mo Yan The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2012 is awarded to the Chinese writer Mo Yan “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary”.

Tomas Transtromer Wins 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature

Tomas Transtromer

The latest news from Stockholm is that the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to a Swedish poet, Tomas Transtromer. He is the one whose surrealistic poetry won him accolades as a very important Scandinavian writer since the time of Second World War. His works revolved around the mysteries of the human mind. According to the Swedish Academy, the works of this poet were recognized “because through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” Transtromer has continued to writer despite his odds. In the year 1990, he suffered from a stroke because of which he was half-paralyzed and was unable to speak. Continuing to write after that, Transtromer got his collection of poems published ‘The Great Enigma’. ‘Windows and Stones’, published in the year 1966, which depicts the themes drawn from his various travels and ‘Baltics’, published in the year 1974 are considered his most famous works. Till now his works have been translated into more than fifty languages across the globe and he has influenced poets far and wide, especially in North America.

 Apart from being a poet, he is also a psychologist, having earned his degree in psychology from Stockholm University. He was born in Stockholm in 1931. His childhood was spent with his mother, who was a teacher. She had divorced his father, who was a journalist. Transtromer started writing poetry when he was in school and brought out his first collection ‘Seventeen Poems’ at the age of twenty-three.

Nobel Prize in Literature 2011: Top 4 Contenders

Less than twenty four hours before the final announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2011 there were a lot of ups and downs in the chances of the finalists winning the most-coveted literary honour. Bob Dylan was being considered the surprise dark horse, who had beaten the odds 100/1 to reach the odds 10/1 and finally to 5/1. He was among the four top candidates for 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature.

#1 BOB DYLAN: He is an American singer-songwriter, poet and a musician. Within the span of 24 hours he reached the top position in the final choices for the Nobel Prize for Literature 2011. His rising to this position may have been surprising for many but he had many feathers in his cap that recommended him for this prize. He has to his credit many published book including ‘Chronicles Volume One’, ‘Tarantula’ and ‘Lyrics: 1962-2001’. Many of his songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, ‘The Times they are a-changin’, ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ reached the level of becoming anthems for civil right and anti-war movement in the United States.

#2 ADONIS: The real name of Adonis is Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, an 81-year-old Syrian poet. Although his position was second, yet he is the most favoured one. One of the reasons for his being a favourite is that he writes in Arabic, a language that in underrepresented because we have only one other Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz, who wrote in Arabic.

#3 HARUKI MURAKAMI: Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist. Till date only two Japanese writers have won the Nobel Prize in Literature: Kenzaburo Oe in the year 1994 and Yasunari Kawabata in the year 1968. Murakami’s novels are based on characters who defy the group mentality that dominates the Japanese culture.

#4 TOMAS TRANSTROMER: He is one of the leading poets of Sweden. This 80-year old poet is famous for his multi-faceted poetry that is characterised by subtlety.

Let us wait and watch who wins the race!!!

Winners of Nobel Prize for Literature

The winner of the much awaited Nobel Prize for Literature 2011 will be announced on Thursday 6 October, 1:00 p.m. CET. The list of the previous winners of Nobel Prize for Literature from 1901 to 2010 is as follows:

2010 Mario Vargas Llosa
2009 Herta Müller
2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
2007 Doris Lessing
2006 Orhan Pamuk
2005 Harold Pinter
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2003 John M. Coetzee
2002 Imre Kertész
2001 Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
2000 Gao Xingjian
1999 Günter Grass
1998 José Saramago
1997 Dario Fo
1996 Wislawa Szymborska
1995 Seamus Heaney
1994 Kenzaburo Oe
1993 Toni Morrison
1992 Derek Walcott
1991 Nadine Gordimer
1990 Octavio Paz
1989 Camilo José Cela
1988 Naguib Mahfouz
1987 Joseph Brodsky
1986 Wole Soyinka
1985 Claude Simon
1984 Jaroslav Seifert
1983 William Golding
1982 Gabriel García Márquez
1981 Elias Canetti
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1979 Odysseus Elytis
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Vicente Aleixandre
1976 Saul Bellow
1975 Eugenio Montale
1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973 Patrick White
1972 Heinrich Böll
1971 Pablo Neruda
1970 Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
1969 Samuel Beckett
1968 Yasunari Kawabata
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965 Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1962 John Steinbeck
1961 Ivo Andric
1960 Saint-John Perse
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
1957 Albert Camus
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 Halldór Kiljan Laxness
1954 Ernest Miller Hemingway
1953 Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1952 François Mauriac
1951 Pär Fabian Lagerkvist
1950 Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
1949 William Faulkner
1948 Thomas Stearns Eliot
1947 André Paul Guillaume Gide
1946 Hermann Hesse
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1943 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1942 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1941 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1940 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 Pearl Buck
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1936 Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
1935 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1934 Luigi Pirandello
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
1932 John Galsworthy
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 Sinclair Lewis
1929 Thomas Mann
1928 Sigrid Undset
1927 Henri Bergson
1926 Grazia Deledda
1925 George Bernard Shaw
1924 Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont
1923 William Butler Yeats
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1921 Anatole France
1920 Knut Pedersen Hamsun
1919 Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler
1918 No Nobel Prize was awarded in the year 1918 as the prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam
1915 Romain Rolland
1914 No Nobel Prize was awarded in the year 1914 as the prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.
1913 Rabindranath Tagore
1912 Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann
1911 Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck
1910 Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse
1909 Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1907 Rudyard Kipling
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray y Eizaguirre
1903 Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson
1902 Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen
1901 Sully Prudhomme

Nobel Prize for Literature 2008 Announced

And finally the winner of the most coveted literary award, the Nobel Prize for Literature, has been announced. The French writer, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008. He is the first French writer to have accomplished this deed, ever since the Chinese-born French writer, Gao Xingjian won it in 2000.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born on April 13, 1940. His father was a Mauritian doctor with a British citizenship and his mother was a French lady. He wrote his first novel at the age of 23, the book was entitled ‘The Interrogation’. Till date he has written more than 40 books, out of which 12 have been translated into English.
So what are you waiting for? Pick up a book by Le Clézio and bask in the glory of having read this Nobel Laureate, if you haven’t already.

Nobel Prize for Literature 2007 - Lessing

The British novelist, Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature, announced yesterday. She is 87 years old at present, just weeks short of her 88th birthday. She is best known for her novel, ‘The Golden Notebook’, written in 1962. The academy that conferred most coveted prize on her called her an “epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” The announcement of the prize was made by Professor Horace Engdahl, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, on 11 October 2007.
She debuted as a novelist with ‘The Grass is Singing’ in 1950. Recently she produced novels like ‘The Good Terrorist’ (1985) that was a satire on romantic politics. In 1988, she wrote ‘The Fifth Child’ (1988) – it was about the tragedy of a family by an antisocial and violent child. Her latest ‘The Cleft’ is a science fiction.

Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'

Toni Morrison was the eighth American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her novel are characterized by epic themes, elaborately sketched African-American characters and vivid dialogues. She won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 for her novel, 'Beloved'. Her other famous novels include 'The Bluest Eye', 'Song of Solomon'.

The last book I read was Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'. In 2000 this novel was selected for Oprah's Book Club.

The story has been narrated from the perception of Pecola, her mother, her father, her friend Claudia and Soaphead Church. This book has been attempted to be banned in schools and libraries because of its controversial nature of its themes of racism and child molestation.The way she begins her story saying that there were no marrigolds that season, suggests that there was something evil happening on that land. It also reminded of T.S. Eliot's line: "April is the cruellest month"('The Wasteland').

Morrison writes in 'The Bluest Eye':

"The damage done was total. She spent her days, walking up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear. Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly. Beating the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach - could not even see - but which filled the valleys of the mind."

What beautiful lines yet so poignant! They summarize the tragedy of Pecola.

'The Good Earth' by Pearl S. Buck

The main character of the novel 'The Good Earth' is Wang Lung, a poor peasant farmer. He marries a slave. And after that he gradually rises from being a poor, humble farmer to being a wealthy, landowner. Having support of his faithful wife he multiplied his wealth. His faith in the capacity of the good earth.

The novel begins with the lines:

"It was Wang Lung's marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. The house was still except for the faint, gasping cough of his old father, whose room was opposite to his own across the middle room. Every morning the old man's cough was the first sound to be heard. Wang Lung usually lay listening to it and moved only when he heard it approaching nearer and when he heard the door of his father's room squeak upon its wooden hinges."

Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck was born on this day, that is, June 26 in 1892. She was a prolific writer. Her father was a missionary. She was born in West Virginia but her family was sent to China when she was three months old. Buck began writing in 1930 and her first publication was 'East Wind:West Wind'. She wrote her famous novel 'The Good Earth' in 1931. She experienced a flourishing career in writing. Before winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938, she won the Pultizer Prize for the Novel in 1932 for her story of the farmer Wang Lung's life.
In 1934 her family returned to United States as they were forced to leave China because of political tensions. She also won the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935.
She wrote over 100 literary works. She is best known for 'The Good Earth' in which she had described the life of the farmer Wang Lung. She died March 6, 1973.
What I believe that a writer never dies, he continues to live through his words. Literature continues to live on and on.

Rabindra Nath Tagore

We have all read Rabindra Nath Tagore at least once. He was a writer par excellence, a lierary seer, and a very important milestone of English literature. His most memorable work was 'Gitanjali'. We all know he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. He was knighted in 1915. But did you know - after the massacre of 1919 he gave up his knighthood. He experienced a short spell of fame in the West. Later his English writings were veiled under a cover of obscurity.
Recently some editors and tranlators have realized that Tagore is also a modernist in a sense although he was previously criticized of being one of the sentimentalist or mystical Edwardian camp. Amit Chaudhri (editor of 'The Picador Book of Modern English Literature') calls him "probably one of the first modernists of the Victorian age."

Here's a song he wished to be sung after his death. Let's comprehend it as a tribute to the great soul:

"The ocean of peace lies ahead of me
Sail the boat, O pilot
You are my constant companion now
Take me in your lap.
Along our journey to the infinite
The pole star alone will shine.
Giver of freedom
Set me free
May your forgiveness and compassion
Be my eternal resources for the journey -
May the mortal ties fall away,
May the vast universe
Hold me in embrace,
And with an undaunted heart
May I come to know the Great Unknown."

(composed in December 1939)

Orhan Pamuk - Nobel Prize winner 2006

Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for the year 2006. He is a Turkish writer born in 1952. Among his novels are included: 'Darkness and Light'(1979)- later published as 'Mr. Cevdet and His Sons' in 1982 , 'The Silent House'(1984), 'The White Castle'(1985), 'The Black Book'(1990), 'The New Life'(1997),'My Name is Red'(2000), 'Snow'(translated in 2004).
In his nobel lecture entitled 'My Father's Suitcase' he talks about the inspiration his father provided him. A small suitcase, filled with his father's writings, manuscripts and notebooks, was Pamuk's legacy. When Pamuk completed his first novel 'Cevdet Bey and Sons' ('Mr. Cevdet and His Sons' in English), his father was confident that one day his son would receive a Nobel Prize. But he didn't remain alive to actually see his receive it one day.

Pamuk mentions in his lecture:

"A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years...As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words."

So you see this is the creative process. And you have had it from the horse's mouth itself!

P.S.I hope to add more information about him soon.