This book will be of interest to those with a deep interest in writing or reading. The acceptance lectures are from 21 Nobel Literature Laureates, from 21 different countries, considered among the greatest minds in the world of literature.
Bloomsbury Review wrote of this book when it was first published that it “gives us a glimpse into the experiences, memories, and most passionately held beliefs of the past quarter century.”
The first Nobel Prize for Literature was presented in 1901, six years after Alfred Nobel drew up his last will and testament. He stipulated that the Prize for Literature was to be presented to the person who had produced “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, as determined by the Nobel academy in Stockholm Sweden. The award celebrates the work of a writer whose contribution to literature consistently transcends national boundaries to connect with the human condition,
The book is as different as those receiving, he awards are and the chapters shown on the contents page are listed below. Maybe not for everyone but it offers some deep thought.
Table Of Contents
My father's suitcase / Orhan Pamuk
Art, truth and politics / Harold Pinter
Sidelined / Elfriede Jelinek
He and his man / J.M. Coetzee
Heureka! / Imre Kertész
Two Worlds / V.S. Naipaul
The case for literature / Gao Xingjian
To be continued ... / Günter Grass
How characters became the masters and the author their apprentice / José Saramago
Contra jogulatores obloquentes (against jesters who defame and insult) / Dario Fo
The poet and the world / Wislawa Szymborska
Crediting poetry / Seamus Heaney
Japan, the ambiguous, and myself / Kenzaburo Oe
The bird is in your hands / Toni Morrison
The Antilles: fragments of epic memory / Derek Walcott
Writing and being / Nadine Gordimer
In search of the present / Octavio Paz
Eulogy to the fable / Camilo José Cela
Mankind's coming of age / Naguib Mahfouz
Aesthetics and language / Joseph Brodsky
This past must address its present / Wole Soyinka
Laureates, 1901 to 2006.
