Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

The English author Kazuo Ishiguro has been named winner of the 2017 Nobel prize in literature, praised by the Swedish Academy for his “novels of great emotional force”, which it said had “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.

Sweet! Love his work. Well deserved.

Yes, thumbs up!

I cannot for the life of me understand how Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize. In fact I can’t understand the prize at all. How do you judge literature in all the different languages? Should the author have made some other contribution to society as a whole or is it just the quality and depth of the works.
Kazuo Ishiguro has only written eight books and surely that is not sufficient to judge his contribution. Then maybe the judges wanted to give it to a Japanese author (although he is English)? If so surely Haruki Murakami is more deserving. If they wanted to award it to an English author then Ian McEwan would have been a much better recipient or at least a dozen others.

>4 bergs47: I completely agree. I’ve read five of Ishiguro’s eight books, and although The Remains of the Day is, in my opinion, a masterpiece and about as perfect as a novel can get, his other books fall far short of that mark. The body of work of Amos Oz and Ngugi wa Thiongo are both far superior to that of Ishiguro, and they have contributed in other realms besides literature. The judges missed the boat again in this year’s choice, if you ask me.

>4 bergs47: Should the author have made some other contribution to society as a whole or is it just the quality and depth of the works.

It's the Nobel Prize for Literature. The work is the author's contribution to society.

I don't agree that eight novels is somehow "not enough" though. I don't think quantity really enters into it. The Prize honors the author's impact on society -- that could be thirty books (Mahfouz) or five (Alexievich). It takes a long view of their literary career.

Antonio Lobo Antunes--that would have been a good choice.

Elena Ferrante

#8--not that Ishiguro is bad but there are lots of others I would have rather have won it. I've only read Ferrante one time and I liked the book and I have another of hers but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I like Ngugi too. I would have said Assia Djebar but then she died and they never ever give it to someone after they die. Margaret Atwood (the Maddaddam trilogy is enough to push her over the top IMO) Elias Khoury (Gate of the Sun) and they should go into the African continent more anyway.

>8 LolaWalser: - isn't the problem with Elena Ferrante that no-one knows who she is? The last article I saw relating to her said that she was a he - Domenico Starnone, possibly co-writing with his wife, the previous number one candidate, Anita Raja. It just seems too problematic to award the prize to someone who could be revealed as someone completely different to who you think they are.

Ishiguro seems a strange choice (I'm glad it was him rather than the mediocre Murakami but in all honesty the prize often seems to be one strange choice after another, occasionally, probably by accident, making the right choice.