Nobel Prize for Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 109 times to 113 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2016, four were African authors.
Nobel Prize for Literature
Explore and Understand Africa Through Her Food and Culture
1-25-2014
✒ African
authors who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature
Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka, African authors who won the Nobel Prize for Literature
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| Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka |
Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka (Wole Soyinka) from Nigeria
writing in English in 1986 in the genres of drama, novel, and poetry. He says
he uses the myths as "the aesthetic matrix" for his writing. Soyinka
the first person and only black African from Africa to be awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature.
It is the dramas that stand out as Wole Soyinka's most
significant achievement. They are of course made to be acted on the stage, with
dance, music, masques, and mime as essential components. But his plays can also
be read as important and fascinating literary works from a richly endowed
writer's experience and imagination - and with roots in a composite culture
with a wealth of living and artistically inspiring traditions.
Soyinka is an author who writes with great deliberation, and
especially in his novels and poems, he can be avant-gardistically sophisticated.
During the war years, his time in prison and afterward, his writing takes on a
more tragic character. The psychological, moral and social conflicts appear
more and more complex and menacing.
Najîb Mahfûz, African authors who won the Nobel Prize for Literature
Najîb Mahfûz from Egypt writing in Arabic, 1988 in the genre
of the novel, Cairo also provides, time and again, the setting for his novels,
short stories and plays.
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| Najîb Mahfûz |
In Arabic literature, the novel is actually a 20th-Century
phenomenon, more or less contemporary with Mahfouz. And it was he who, in due
course, was to bring it to maturity. Some of the milestones are Midaq Alley,
The Trilogy, Children of Gebalawi, The Thief and the Dogs, Chit-Chat on the
Nile, Respected Sir, and Mirrors. Greatly varied and partly experimental, these
novels range from psychological realism to an allegorical and
mystic-metaphysical design. Naguib Mahfouz has an unrivaled position as spokesperson
for Arabic prose.
Through him, in the cultural sphere to which he belongs, the
art of the novel and the short story has attained international standards of
excellence, the result of a synthesis of classical Arabic tradition, European
inspiration and personal artistry. Najîb Mahfûz died August 30, 2006, at age 94
in Cairo.
Nadine Gordimer, African authors who won the Nobel Prize for Literature
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| Nadine Gordimer |
The only female to date Nadine Gordimer of South Africa in
1991 in the genres of novel, short story, and essay. Art is on the side of the
oppressed, Nadine Gordimer says in one of her essays, urging us to think before
we dismiss this heretical idea about the freedom of art. If art is freedom, she
asks, how could it exist within the oppressors?
She has had the courage to write as if censorship did not
exist, and so has seen her books banned, time after time. Above all, it is
people, individual men, and women, that have captured her and been captured by
her.
It is their lives, their heaven, and hell, that absorb her.
The outer reality is ever present, but it is through her characters that the
whole historical process is crystallized. Conveying to the reader a powerful
sense of authenticity, and with wide human relevance, she makes visible the extremely
complicated and utterly inhuman living conditions in the world of racial
segregation. She feels political responsibility, and does not shy away from its
consequences, but will not allow it to affect her as a writer: her texts are
not agitatorial, not propagandistic.
Still, her works and the deep insights she offers contribute
to shaping reality. Thoughts and impressions such as these are called forth by
novels like A Guest of Honour, The Conservationist, Burger's Daughter, July's
People, and My Son's Story. However, in a manner as absorbing as in her novels,
Nadine Gordimer develops her penetrating depiction of character, her compassion
and her powers of precise wording in her short stories, in collections like Six
Feet of the Country and, as yet untranslated, A Soldier's Embrace and Something
Out There.
J. M. Coetzee, African authors who won the Nobel Prize for Literature
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| J. M. Coetzee |
J. M. Coetzee in 2003 writing in English in the genres of
novel, essay, and translation. To write is to awaken counter-voices within
oneself, and to dare enter into dialogue with them. The dangerous attraction of
the inner self is John Coetzee's theme: the senses and bodies of people, the
interiority of Africa. "To imagine the unimaginable" is the writer's
duty. As a post-modern allegorist, Coetzee knows that novels that do not seek
to mimic reality best convince us that reality exists.
Coetzee sees through the obscene poses and false pomp of
history, lending voice to the silenced and the despised. Restrained but stubborn,
he defends the ethical value of poetry, literature, and imagination. Without
them, we blinker ourselves and become bureaucrats of the soul. John Coetzee's
characters seek refuge beyond the zones of power. Life and Times of Michael K.
gives form to the dream of an individual outside the fabric of human
coexistence.
Waiting for the Barbarians is a disturbing love story about
wanting to possess another person and to turn that person inside out as though
she were a riddle to be solved. Everyone who has recognized the threat of
totalitarianism and felt the desire to own another person can learn from
Coetzee's dark fables. With intense concreteness and verbally disciplined
desperation, he tackles one of the great problems of the ages: understanding
the driving forces of brutality, torture, and injustice. Who does the writing,
who seizes power by taking pen in hand?
Can black experience be depicted by a white person? In Foe,
Friday is an African, already dehumanized by Defoe. To give a speech to Friday
would be to colonize him and deny him what remains of his integrity. The girl
in Waiting for the Barbarians speaks an unintelligible language and has been
blinded by torture; Michael K has a harelip and Friday has had his tongue cut
out. His life is recounted by Susan Barton: that is, through 'white writing',
the title of one of Coetzee's books.
Did you know?
The Nobel Prize is named for Alfred Bernhard Nobel the inventor of dynamite. He used his fortune after his death and stated in his will money to institute the Nobel Prizes. Nobel held views that were considered revolutionary during his time; he took a special interest in social and peace-related issues. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden.
The Nobel Prize is named for Alfred Bernhard Nobel the inventor of dynamite. He used his fortune after his death and stated in his will money to institute the Nobel Prizes. Nobel held views that were considered revolutionary during his time; he took a special interest in social and peace-related issues. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden.
