Nobel Prize for Literature 2018/2019
 

The suspense isn't quite killing me, but there's a nice livestream with a countdown to 12.45 pm CEST; the winners will be anounced at 1 pm "at the earliest", so you will have at least 15 minutes of journos waiting in the lobby, which is the best part:

https://www.nobelprize.org/

Oh, the stream is on Yootoob too:

All the gold leaf decoration on the Nobel website and Twitter is a bit tacky, isn't it? Did they hire a certain president's interior designer?

Thank you for posting this information on the most important literary event in writing.

You're welcome. So how do you feel about the tasteful gold leaf design?

You mean the one specifically for Literature?
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/fa...for-literature

It's OK, but I'm not enamored over it.

No, I was referring to the website design at https://www.nobelprize.org/ , and also used in the winners' portraits I posted above.

It's just OK, but no big deal (for me).

I now need to decide what work I need to read by each one. I'm embarrassed to say that I have read neither, although I'm very familiar with Handke's name and status.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

I haven't read anything by Tokarczuk. Handke I have tried several times over the years (I'm German, so can read him in the original.) A very weird author, but also interesting. His early stuff I found harder to relate to than his later (beginning some time in the 1980s) work. There is never much plot in his novels and short novels. What plot there is is usually an excuse for an author proxy character's ruminations and meditations, which range from the enthralling and fascinating to the obnoxious. But trust in him to come up with amazingly beautiful descriptive passages every few pages.

I last tried his latest one, Die Obstdiebin, which hasn't been translated into English yet, it seems. It has passages of great beauty, and is even very funny in places, but I ran out of steam after a third of the book anyway. He is a Romantic, who always misses some kind of wonder in the modern world (which I can relate to), and he is also a very angry man, and his anger can get on one's nerves. Especially when it seems to be just a pose, as in the case of the Nobel. Just a few years ago he said how ridiculous and useless the Nobel Prize was, and that it should be abolished; but as soon as they offer it to him, it doesn't take him a minute's thought to accept.

And then there's the whole Milosevic business, which has come back to haunt him since the announcement. But that would have to go into the politics forum.

^ Thanks for the insight on Handke.

What title would you recommend in English translation?

Perhaps A Moment of True Feeling for early Handke, and Crossing the Sierra de Gredos for the later one. Both, in different ways, fascinated and infuriated me, but I haven't read anything by Handke that didn't do that.

"A Moment of True Feeling" is only $7.99 and it looks interesting, so I bought it.

Thank you!

Is it anymore? I suspect that winning other literary prizes tends to move sales a lot more than the Nobel prize does. I can remember them giving it to Bob Dylan a few years ago and he skipped the presentation ceremonies.

Just a fair warning about the translation. As with most translations the flair and the flow of words is lost. Needless to say, but the original usually is a lot better (if and only if you can understand the language). Normally, when content matters, as with most novels, a translation doesn't suffer much. In Handke's case much is lost in translation due to his unique writing style.