The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 | Hacker News Reader

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015

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56 pointsdavidiach17 comments

I hope more people will become aware of her book "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster". A sad witness of a human tragedy.

http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disas...

Her writing is vivid and terrifying. Her _War Does Not Have a Woman's Face_ is at the top of my list of books to unread. It's a collection of accounts from female survivors of WW2 trenches. It is not pushing a feminist narrative in traditional sense (wasn't a thing in USSR) but is haunting in its honesty. Think _Saving Private Ryan_ without the humanistic takeaway.

She's a part of Belarusian late 20th century documentary realism tradition, where authors build around authentic, traumatic biographies of the war generation. In literature, Vasil Bykau, her contemporary, even better known domestically. In cinematography, Klimov's _Come and See_ perhaps the most known work.

Thank you for the background. I am super-familiar with the Soviet WWII documented experience (Vasiliy Grossman, Ehrenburg, etc. ) but I've embarrassed to say I've never heard of her.

That's hardly surprising: I only read her since am originally from Belarus myself. She's also an outspoken critic of both Lukashenko and Putin, something that doesn't bode well for a Russian language writer at all. I'm happy she gets the wider recognition now.

Is it odd that neither the local city library and the university library don't have one of her works (pop. 320k)? She has gotten awards before, so one would think she's more popular. How political is this choice?

As a child of two parents who lived through WWII I recognized her sample from the book 'unchildlike stories'/'last witnesses' http://www.alexievich.info/knigi/LastWit_En.pdf but on her page it seems it has only been translated into japanese and is not available in a language I (or my parents) understand, it's a pity. Another book I would like to read is 'The wonderful deer of the eternal hunt' but that doesn't seem to be ready yet (or abandoned?). In an article about her work from 15 years ago it's mentioned that she has been working on this book for 3 years now and she wants the topic to be part of her work. http://www.tol.org/client/article/8060-a-writer-from-a-crack...

Fortunately I can order 'Voices from Chernobyl' and 'War Does Not Have a Woman's Face' in paper format (only), just as well as in a way it makes the stories more memorable for me then the dead and cold e-surrogate.

The "Swedish Academy" who awards these prices are considered somewhat of a joke here in Sweden. Almost as much as we consider the Norwegian Nobel Committee a joke - remember the embarassingly prematurely awarded Obama nobel peace prize - basically only awarded because the Norwegians wanted to frolick with celebs.

They have a very elitist stance - if an author gets popular, no matter how "good" or "bad" he or she is, the prize seemingly cannot be awarded to them.

http://www.today.com/id/15210453/ns/today-today_books/t/nobe...

"A political bias may be hard to prove but there is no doubt the academy favors lesser-known writers to international best sellers. Few outside literary circles had heard of China’s Gao Xingjian, Poland’s Wislawa Szymborska or Kenzaburo Oe of Japan.

Gert Fylking, a Swedish radio journalist taunted the academy for a decade by showing up at the award announcement and yelling 'finally' when Engdahl read the winner’s name. After being barred from entering one year, he showed up the next in disguise.

'The point is that 99 percent of the time, the writer who wins the Nobel Prize is completely unknown to the big masses,' Fylking said."

I don't see how "literary circles" should be criticized for choosing works that they believe have merit in their own field. Nobody was up in arms earlier about the chemistry award going to people who weren't "household names" - other than the Peace prize, the odds that anyone who wins a Nobel this year will have a bigger public profile than Alexievich are slim to none.

> Nobody was up in arms earlier about the chemistry award going to people who weren't "household names"

That's because chemistry papers can only be appreciated by a trained chemist, whereas literature is a popular art form which ought to be appreciatable by anybody. Or any educated person, if you want to dismiss the tastes of the great unwashed (it's interesting how literature is one of the few fields where it's still socially acceptable to be a snob).

Now, maybe the Nobel Prize Committee is doing us a great service by uncovering the works of these great authors whose work has never been appreciated before. But in that case, you'd expect them to become popular after their prizes, and everyone would be going "boy, I sure am glad that the Nobel Prize Committee brought Derek Walcott to my attention or else I'd never have read Omeros". But nope, most of the laureates continue to languish in relative obscurity even after they win the prizes.

Well, it's also a lot easier to validate their choices - you and anyone else who are fluent in English, Russian or a number of other languages can go pick up a copy of Voices from Chernobyl, say, and give it a try. (It's amazing.) You will have a harder time validating the chemists' work.

Because it's a popularity contest. Not much to do with the actual state of literature or the quality of the chosen person. They've basically admitted this many times.

They also have an intense love of European lit.

I find it interesting that betting houses have gotten the winners right for a few years already.

http://www.ibtimes.com/pulse/nobel-prize-2015-betting-odds-w...

Something similar to the DraftKings affair maybe, where someone or several someones with insider information are using it for their advantage?

She wasn't a dark horse to win though, she's been favored for at least a year now:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/nonfiction...

So it might be a case of a Prediction Game doing right

I remember from some years ago the Hollywood Stock Exchange ( www.hsx.com/ ), an online game where people "invested" on movies, was used as a "crowd wisdom" source for decisions on whether to fund movies, etc, and was fairly accurate IIRC.

Maybe there's a similar opportunity for other fields? A Startup Stock Exchange game? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Stock_Exchange

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market

This is actually only the second time in 12 years that the favorite per the Ladbrokes odds has gotten the award, the last being Pamuk in 2006.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123058/who-will-win-nobel...

I stand corrected, it seems the Literature nobel prize is very hard to guess correctly, they did find out last year's prize early but it was because of a leak.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/nobel-prize-in-literature-won-by...

"Betting on Modiano to win the Nobel surged in the last week, raising questions about a possible leak. David Williams of bookmaker Ladbrokes said Modiano's odds had shortened from 100-1 a few months ago to 10-1 before the announcement."

Edit: I still think a "Startup Stock Exchange" could be fun, maybe based on CrunchBase or something :)

I used to mess around on exchangel.co, but mainly I'm interested in placing long bets which just require some patience rather than trading in the artificial market. I think there's another one out there too that does start up trading.

Thanks! I'll look them up.

I've never read her but I assume this is where you start:

http://lib.ru/NEWPROZA/ALEKSIEWICH/zhensk.txt

Be warned, none of her books are light reads. I put a summary in the other thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10352263

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