Nobel Prize for Literature 2024 Winner Reaction

Hello! The winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature is going to be announced very soon, so I thought it'd be fun to do a live reaction. I've got the website up here, and who is it going to be? And it could be any author from around the world, but of course people love to speculate about it, so I thought I would start this video a little bit early to discuss who I'm hoping is to win this year's prize and other possible candidates, and also talk about the award in general and how the decision of the winner is made, because the Nobel Prize released a really interesting article and interview a while ago, giving a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the prize and how it's decided. So people from all around the world of academics and critics and writers and former winners suggest possible candidates to the Nobel Prize for Literature committee, and they say that that's well over, like, 200 names. They narrow it down to 20 authors they want to consider, and then after much debate and consideration, they arrive at five authors that they want to seriously consider for this year's prize, and then they go to read all of those five authors' published works, and then debate about who is going to win. Now, as far as I'm aware, these shortlists of candidates are never officially announced, so sometimes you'll see in bios of authors where it'll say that they have been listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is false, because, yeah, I don't think that information is officially announced. Of course, it might be leaked at some point, but also it presents this way of deciding upon a winner presents a real challenge, especially for authors that are very prolific. So one of my absolute favourite authors of all time is Joyce Carol Oates, and it's been said before that she'll probably never win the Nobel Prize because she has published so much that for the committee to read everything that she has published, I mean, would take a full year in itself, not even to mention the other authors that they're considering for the award. So yeah, I have heard that before. Now, looking at very handily, LitHub compiled this list of the bookies' favourites to win this year's award, and so there's a whole list of many, many authors, but topping this list is the Chinese experimental author Ken Shui, who I have never read before, but I do have a book of hers called Love in the New Millennium, and what was really interesting about picking this novel off the shelf is I saw on the back, there's a quote from Susan Sontag, who says, if China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate, it is Ken Shui, which is a slightly odd way of phrasing it, had Sontag read every writer in China, and couldn't she have just said, Ken Shui should win the Nobel Prize for literature. But anyway, was she prophetic in saying this? We will find out very soon, and Ken Shui, I think, was also a favourite to win the award last year, although the winner was actually the Norwegian author Jan Foss, who is a really fascinating author. I've still only read the first book in this trilogy of the Septology books of a new name, and I did find it absolutely fascinating, but I want to go back and reread it before reading the other books on the list, and of course, the winner of the year before that was the great French author Annie Arnaud, whose books I have here on my shelf behind me, so pick them out. Another Fitzcarraldo author here in the UK, so can see many of her books, and I've read a number of her books. Her book, The Years, is absolutely masterful and incredible, but so much of her writing is really fascinating. So I saw a journalist posting on social media recently of a link to Fitzcarraldo's catalogue of authors, and just saying, Jane, just evaluating who's going to be the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, because they have a high hit rate of authors. But yeah, there's many really interesting authors included on this list, like the Australian writer Gerald Murnane, who I've only read one of his books, called Border Districts, which was really fascinating, and then Haruki Murakami, of course, is like a name that comes up all the time, the great experimental Argentinian author Cesar Heria, who I've read a few of his books. He writes these very short, kind of hallucinatory, very like absurd type books that are absolutely fascinating. There's Margaret Atwood is close to the top. There's Anne Carson, it'd be really great to see her win the award. There's Don DeLillo. There's many other authors that many I've not heard of before. So when the winner is announced, I might have to go scramble to find out information about this author. There is Mircea Carterescu, the great Romanian author, and I read his novel Solenoid last year. It's honestly one of the best novels I've ever read in my life. And he won a Dublin Prize earlier this year for that book. So it'd be fantastic to see him win. There's Salman Rushdie. There is, who else? There's Colson Whitehead. It'd be fantastic to see him win. Edmund White, I would be so happy if Edmund White wins. Han Kang, the great South Korean author. Hoeng Suk Yeon is a possibility. Jamaica Kincaid, who I love her writing. And then Joyce Carol Oates at 33 to 1. Joyce Carol Oates is listed for it. Now, if she wins, I will freak out. I'm just warning you that that is going to happen. Marilynne Robinson. Robert Coover is listed, though I think he died very recently, so wouldn't actually be eligible for the award anymore. Robert McFarlane, that would be fantastic to see him win. Sebastian Berry. Amitav Ghosh, it'd be great to see him win because I just read his recent nonfiction book, Smoke and Ashes, very recently. A really moving and powerful book about the history of colonialism and the opium trade and how it connects to our current day. So that would be fantastic to see as well. Louise Erdrich, it'd be great if she won. Ali Smith at 50 to 1. If Ali Smith wins, I will also freak out because she is another favourite of mine. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she is also at 50 to 1. It was just announced recently, she is going to have a new novel out. How exciting is that? At 50 to 1 is also Stephen King and at 60 to 1 is J. K. Rowling. The author of this article says J. K. Rowling is in the insult slot, which made me laugh. The announcement is going to be made very soon. It's slightly confusing because on their official YouTube channel, it says it's going to start in less than one minute, but then on the Nobel Prize website, it says it's going to be announced in 15 minutes. So maybe just the announcements will start or the speeches will start in one minute's time, and then the actual announcement is going to be made what will be the equivalent of 12 noon here in the UK. I guess that's the way it's going to go, so let me know in the comments below who you are hoping is going to win, although you'll probably know who's won if you've started watching this video, but yeah, of what authors that you would really like to see win this prize in the future, or if your favourite has won, then that will be fantastic. Okay, so it's just starting. You can hear the rustle of people in the background. Now we will see if the announcement is actually going to be made now, or if it's just, are we just going to get lots of journalists like sitting around waiting for the announcement to start? And yeah, that's probably more the case, isn't it? So rather than just having you sit here and wait for that, I'm going to skip ahead to right before the actual announcement is going to be made. But they're giving some interesting facts. So the oldest person to win the award was Doris Lessing at 87 years old. The Literature Prize has been shared between two individuals on four occasions. And I was right, yeah, so nominations for the Literature Prize are kept secret for 50 years. So yeah, we won't know, probably in our lifetimes, the people who have actually been nominated for this prize. The Literature Prize has been awarded 116 times since 1901. There's some journalists having a chat in the foreground here. Really funny just watching all these journalists sit around scrolling on their phones. The viewership has jumped up to over 13,000 now. There is a real excitement about everyone focusing on this, of who is going to win. Ah, they're entering! Varmt välkomna till Svenska Akademin och detta års tillkännahivande. Jag heter Mats Malm, jag är Akademens ständiga sekreterare. I think I should learn Swedish for next year. Akademen har just sammanträtt och det är dags att meddela beslutet om vem som tilldelas årets Nobelpris i litteratur. Got that. My name is Mats Malm, I fill the function of Permanent Secretary. The Academy has convened and can now announce its decision on the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nobelpriset i litteratur år 2024 tilldelas den sydkoreanske författaren Han Kang. It's Han Kang! Han Kang! South Korean author! Oh my gosh! Wow! The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to South Korean author Han Kang. Yes! For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life. I was able to talk to Han Kang on the phone. She was having an ordinary day it seems. Not so ordinary anymore. She was having supper with her son. She wasn't really prepared for this but we have begun to discuss preparations for December. We look very much forward to meeting her here then. Oh wow! Yes! So great! Big up to Han Kang's translator Deborah Smith who has been such a champion of her work. It is so fantastic that Han Kang, the great South Korean author, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I've read three of her books. They've all been quite different from each other and really fascinating. She's probably best known for her novel, The Vegetarian, which is the story of a woman who has refused to eat meat. But rather than showing her perspective, it shows three different individuals who are connected with her and their point of view and account of her life. Through their perspectives, we get this strong sense of her being constricted by the expectations of the society around her and how she is maintaining this inner sense of dignity throughout this repression and through making this one simple step in her life of not eating meat anymore. So she's kind of like a modern day Bartleby, the scrivener, that just makes this statement of No, I won't. I won't. I won't. I won't. And just in doing that, in that personal protest, makes such a bigger statement and impact of the world around her and the personal repercussions for her are really tragic and heart-rending following this story. There is also her novel, Human Acts, which is an account of the survivors and victims of protests that occurred in South Korea in 1980. Following the story of a number of those individuals, because so often when we hear about widespread conflict, it is reduced down to numbers. We just get the amount of victims and people who died in these conflicts and then they just become statistics and this tries to really honor people that have been lost in this protest and in this conflict by telling their individual stories and points of view of both the living and the dead. It's a really haunting and powerful book and one of the most powerful that I've ever read about war. There is also the White Book, which is probably, I would say, probably the most experimental of her books that I have read. It's somewhere between novel and memoir and poetry where the author is meditating on the color white and things that have been connected, her personal connections to that color throughout her life. So it's sort of telling the story of her life in this kind of fragmented way and there are also photographs included in this. I found it a really powerful and beautiful book, one that I wish more people had read and talked about as much as The Vegetarian. Now all three of these books were translated by Deborah Smith, who has been so instrumental in bringing Han Kan's work to the English-speaking world and it's kind of ironic that Deborah Smith founded her own press called Tilted Access Press and a few months ago, Tilted Access Press announced that they are really struggling to survive and keep going and so they have this crowdfunding effort, which I'll put a link to in the description below if you want to help support them because of rising costs of printing and distribution. They're really struggling to keep going and so the literature that this publisher is bringing, the translated literature that they're bringing into the English-speaking world is so important and it's really heartbreaking to see that they're struggling in this way and I think it makes a bigger statement about how little literature and international literature is valued in our society, that the publishers and the people that really believe in this literature and are trying to bring it to readers are struggling in this way. So that is a big statement in itself, but I would love to hear what you think about the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Have you read anything by her? Are you interested in reading anything by her? I'd really recommend these three novels and she also has a new novel coming out in February of next year, or at least here in the UK, called We Do Not Part and maybe the publication date of that will be moved up now that she has won the Nobel Prize for Literature but I'm looking forward to reading that as well. So thank you for watching me give my reaction to this year's winner. Yay! Such an exciting result. Now Jo's career, once again, she can go back to tweeting about her cats but let me know what you think in the comments below and I will speak to you again soon. Bye bye.