ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
The winner of the Nobel Prize in literature was announced this week. It went to the Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai. I've been covering the prize announcement for more than a decade now, and I got to tell you, it's kind of a crapshoot who wins, who doesn't. And so it's worth asking, what kind of writer is the Nobel Committee looking for and who might be up for it in the next few years? Lincoln Michel is an author and critic who writes about fiction and the publishing industry for his newsletter Counter Craft, and he joins us now. Hey, Lincoln.
LINCOLN MICHEL: Hi, thanks for having me.
LIMBONG: All right, so this year's winner, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, is a Hungarian author. His work is known for his dystopian themes and dense prose style. What are your thoughts on this pick?
MICHEL: Well, I think Laszlo Krasznahorkai is a great pick and also maybe a very expected pick. He's been kind of a contender for the Nobel Prize for a long time and, yeah, is famous for writing books with really long sentences, but he's - often, like, book-length sentences. But he's a great author and someone that, you know, many people expected to win, which is maybe a bit of a change from some of the more recent prizes that were kind of surprises.
LIMBONG: Yeah, let's talk about that. So, like, when we talk about the last several winners, what does the last few batch of writers tell you about who tends to win this award?
MICHEL: Well, I think one thing is that the awards committee changes maybe what they're looking for, so it's hard to know. For the last decade or so, there's been some kind of surprise winners. The most obvious is Bob Dylan winning as, you know, someone mainly known as a singer-songwriter.
LIMBONG: Yeah, that was back in 2016. I remember it took us by surprise. We were all - we were like, whoa, no (laughter).
MICHEL: Well, yes, 'cause it was also after the long drought for an American winner, so...
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MICHEL: ...Everyone was expecting Thomas Pynchon or something to win, and then they were like, nope, we're giving it to Bob Dylan.
LIMBONG: Yeah. And so what would you say is the mission of giving out the Nobel Prize in literature?
MICHEL: You know, the Nobel Prize in literature was founded with the idea of giving the award to - and I'm quoting here - the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction, which is kind of a vague mission statement. I think the Nobel Prize Committee has changed - as its makeup changes and as history changes - what it's looking for. Often it's thought of as, like, the prize that goes to more or less one of the undisputed greatest writers alive while they're still living. But at other times, such as the Bob Dylan pick, it seems like the awards committee is trying to expand the definition of what we think of as literature or even just surprise people with a pick that not everyone was expecting.
LIMBONG: You know, you'd mentioned the drought in American wins for this prize. We should say, so two Americans have won over the past 30 years, right? There was Dylan, like you said, and the poet Louise Gluck. But for novelists, I think the last American winner was Toni Morrison back in 1993, yeah?
MICHEL: Yes.
LIMBONG: I don't want to be America-centric here, and we shouldn't (laughter) - we shouldn't, you know, say that America is, like, some sort of special place in this world or that, like, the world should revolve around American literature. But we don't put up numbers in this prize, and I wonder what you make of that.
MICHEL: Well, I think that you're right to not want to be too America-centric. I think it is true that the Nobel Committee for a certain stretch of history, like the last 40 years, has had something of a bias against American writers, but I think it's probably more true that they've had a bias towards European writers. And obviously, many people have leveled this charge, but a kind of famous statistic is that there's been more winners from the country of Sweden alone than all of Asia or all of Latin America. So it's probably more the European bias that's the issue than anti-American, per se.
LIMBONG: Yeah. Is there an argument here that the lack of Nobel lit wins from American writers is due to the fact that we just don't translate that much literature abroad?
MICHEL: Well, yes, there was an incident in 2008 where one of the Nobel judges made that claim, that American literature is too insular and too disconnected from the rest of the world. For me, I think that's both true and false. I think it's very true that the country as a whole does not translate much. Apparently, something like 3% of the books in a bookstore are translated, which is pretty small given the number of other people and other languages in the world.
I'm not sure that that translates to insular fiction, per se. Like, our great writers, you know, Toni Morrison, who did win, or Don DeLillo or whoever you might name, I think, are probably pretty versed in world literature, as well. But it's true of the country that we don't read as much translated literature as we should.
LIMBONG: Yeah. So I'm just wondering. So, like, to go back to sort of the original question is, like, if we look at the past, let's say, five years, what trends are we seeing? What kind of mood or vibe or aesthetic is the Nobel Committee really looking for?
MICHEL: You know, I think that they're kind of looking not to have a vibe, actually. I think they're kind of going in different directions each time, alternating somewhat between very expected names like Laszlo Krasznahorkai or very older acclaimed authors like Annie Ernaux but then kind of mixing it up with more surprises like Han Kang in 2024.
And I don't know. These writers that have come in the last five years or so have kind of different styles and different approaches to literature, Annie Ernaux is known for very memoiristic, quote-unquote, "autofiction." Han Kang has written political fiction and also a kind of great surrealist novel called "The Vegetarian."
One does get the impression that the Nobel Prize in recent years is trying to kind of move around the world a bit. And I think the fact that Louise Gluck got it a couple of years ago means that America will probably not win for the foreseeable future.
LIMBONG: That's author and critic Lincoln Michel. Lincoln, thank you so much for joining us.
MICHEL: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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