Nobel Prize - Literature
 

Laureates - Nobel Prize in Literature

A few years ago I decided that I would try to read all laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I have now read more than 80 of them, so I have about 20 or so to go. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I wonder if anyone else has found this worthwhile or anyone else interested in trying? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

How about some thoughts? Highlights? Lowlights? I've read probably a dozen of those authors, and not all of those for the work they won the Prize for.

Also, I was breifly confused when I saw Hermann Hesse on the list. I was thinking of Rudolf Hess. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

yes that's how i find books, i find books that won nobel prize it works really well.

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

How do you select which work of a particular author to read?

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

Umm, I had quite a few "discoveries", that is, authors whom I would not have read otherwise and that were sufficiently interesting to go and seek others of their book.

I usually take the first work that I find. Not neccesarily the one for which the prize was awarded.

PS: I am doing the same with other litt. prizes (Booker, Whitbread, Orange). I find it a way of selecting books that has many rewards and few dissapointments.

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

Two nobel laureates that should be read by everyone are Alexandar Solzhenitsyn and the Norwegian Sigrid Undset. Solzhenitsyn should be well known, and his work "The Gulag Archipelago" is the most important work of the 20th century.

I bet most have not heard of Sigrid Undset, so here is a link: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/undset.htm The Kristin Lavransdotter trilogy is a masterpiece of history, psychology and fiction. I cannot say enough good things about it. It is reading at the highest level. It's not fair to make comparisons to film, but to stimulate thinking, I will say it is similar to literature what Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal and the Virgin Spring are to film. But more realistic.

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

Great! Peter,

Sigrid Undset is one of the one I haven't read yet. I will now search for it, as my next one.

Cheers.

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

for me, the Nobel sticker is as good a reason as any to pick up an interesting book. two i've found this way that i really enjoyed were

Blindness-José Saramago
My Century-Gunter Grass

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

[ QUOTE ]
Two nobel laureates that should be read by everyone are Alexandar Solzhenitsyn and the Norwegian Sigrid Undset. Solzhenitsyn should be well known, and his work "The Gulag Archipelago" is the most important work of the 20th century.

I bet most have not heard of Sigrid Undset, so here is a link: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/undset.htm The Kristin Lavransdotter trilogy is a masterpiece of history, psychology and fiction. I cannot say enough good things about it. It is reading at the highest level. It's not fair to make comparisons to film, but to stimulate thinking, I will say it is similar to literature what Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal and the Virgin Spring are to film. But more realistic.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have been urging people to read Kristin Lavransdatter since I discovered it in my early times. It is the single most important book I ever read because it led me to my life's work. I have read it over and over and over, and I am in the midst of re-reading at this moment. Undset is a cultural hero of Norway--literally almost the whole country bought tickets to Liv Ullman's film version of Kristin, and the set of her childhood manor has become a tourist attraction. There are Undset tours which take visitors to all the locations described in the book. Kristin is the most accurate fictional depiction of life in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages that I know of. If you would like to give Kristin Lavransdatter a try, get the NEW translation by Tiina Nunnally--it's much better than the
old "Nobel Prize" translation, and it restores a significant number of pages that the old translation cut.

Re: Nobel Prize - Literature
 

Midge,

What do you do? Because I want your job... if you have one.

-Ev