The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 was awarded to Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Alexievich’s works are by-products of in-depth reporting done throughout her career. Her first book, , published in 1985, documented untold gender narratives of World War Two while documented personal memories of adults who survived the war. Her 1993 book, , recorded suicides due to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Her most notable works in English translation are a collection of narratives from Afghanistan called and .
The announcement of this prestigious prize introduced me to Orhan Pamuk and Doris Lessing. While I have not read Svetlana Alexievich yet, it will be a pleasure to discover her. Meanwhile, the announcement also brought about an urge to discuss other favorite Laureates that have changed lives all over the world, to some extent at least, with their writing.
In 2006, Orhan Pamuk became the second-youngest person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Rudyard Kipling was the youngest winner at 42; he won the Nobel for in 1907) For all his life, Pamuk has pursued no other profession but writing and has written great books like
Pamuk, who describes (2002) as his ‘first and last political novel’, presented a critical observation on freedom of thought and human rights in Turkey. In , Ka, a poet, goes to Kars, a northeastern, trouble-torn city in the pursuit of Kadife, a woman he loves. With this fictional journey as its backdrop, Pamuk drew a landscape of violence and fundamentalism. He also shows a keen insight into the dynamics of adult relationships with fresh similes and visual analogies. In just two lines, Pamuk exemplifies Ka’s confusion after Kadife rejects him:
Another author worth discovering is Doris Lessing who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Born on October 22, 1919, she was a prolific writer till she died in 2013. But, it was not a smooth start. (1997), the second volume of her autobiography, Lessing recalls how she did not know how to define herself and how to see herself in a social context after walking out of her marriage and leaving two young children behind and finally leaving for London in 1949 to pursue a career in writing. The two volumes of her autobiography are vivid description of growing up in the shadow of the World War I. Her collection of short stories titled is an excellent read as well.
It was a task for Lessing to get her first novel, , published. Publishers had stereotypical expectations of the dynamics between a black servant and a white woman in the story and one requested her to add a rape scene. She recounted her indignation in her autobiography: The whole point of ‘’ was the unspoken, devious codes of behavior of the whites, nothing ever said, everything understood, and the relationship between Mary Turner, the white woman, and Moses, the black man, was described so that nothing was explicit.
Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez also started as a journalist. Gabo, as he was fondly called, was the master of magical realism. His writing was filled with surreal similes, talks of omen and superstitions, minute observation of human character and a liberal dose of animals, birds and pets in the backdrop. His novel s (1994) materialized after a reporting assignment took him to a newly discovered burial site where the remains of one young girl still had long, lovely hair. This incident reminded him of a legend his grandmother often narrated and he began to write the story.
(1981) is a fascinating, heartbreaking work of investigative journalism. Though written as fiction, it will remain a chilling document of the mores and customs of a forgotten era. The following year, in 1982, he won the Nobel. In his autobiography, (2002), he reveals how (1967) mostly took inspiration from memories narrated by his grandfather while (1985) was inspired by his parents’ love story.
I end this piece with an excerpt from the poem by Pablo Neruda, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, and whom Gabriel Garcia Marquez deeply admired:
strewn with the rainbow’s superstitious carpets
and evening’s vegetation.
That way I go “ not without some fatigue,
Treading grave loam, fresh from the spade,
Dreaming among these doubtful greens…
