Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

NOBELLITERATURE

Date fixed for Nobel Literature Prize

The Swedish Academy said on Thursday that the winner of the Nobel Literature Prize will be announced on Thursday, October 8th.

Published: 2 October 2009 11:55 CEST

The permanent secretary of the Academy, Peter Englund, will make the much-awaited announcement in Stockholm on Thursday at 1pm (11am GMT).

The date of the literature prize attribution is revealed only a few days in advance, while the dates for the other prizes are known several months ahead of time.

The Nobel festivities kick off on Monday with the announcement of the medicine prize, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday.

The literature laureate is traditionally revealed on a Thursday during the Nobel week.

The peace prize winner is scheduled to be announced on Friday, and the economics prize on Monday, October 12th.

In line with tradition, the Swedish Academy gave no indication of its choice for the literature prize. It never reveals the names it is considering, and its deliberations are sealed for 50 years.

No favourites have emerged for the 2009 prize, but Stockholm literary circles have suggested that it is time for the prize to be given to a poet.

The last poet to win was Wislawa Szymborska of Poland in 1996.

Last year, the award went to French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

NOBEL

German author wins Nobel Literature Prize

German writer Herta Müller has been announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009.

Published: 8 October 2009 15:25 CEST
German author wins Nobel Literature Prize

In the words of the Swedish Academy, Müller “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”.

Born in 1953 in a German-speaking enclave in Romania, she emigrated to Germany in 1987. Her mother spent five years in a work camp in present-day Ukraine and her father served in the Waffen SS during World War II.

One of her most recent works, Atemschaukel (2009), portrayed the exile of German Romanians in the Soviet Union, where many German Romanians were deported at the end of the war.

In the mid 1970s, Müller studied German and Romanian literature at university in Timişoara, during which time she was linked with Aktionsgruppe Banat, a circle of young German-speaking authors who opposed Ceauşescu’s dictatorship.

She later worked at a factory, but was fired after refusing to work as an informant for the secret police.

Müller made her literary debut in 1982 with Niederungen, a collection of short stories, which was censored in Romania. She released an uncensored version in Germany two years later, while at the same time publishing a second book, Drückender Tango, in Romania.

The two works depicted life in a secluded German-speaking village, detailing the corruption and oppression that came with it.

While criticized in her own country, Müller was received warmly by the German press.

In the 1990s, Müller published several more novels which highlighted the challenges and despair of life in a dictatorship.

She currently lives in Berlin, and since 1995 has served as a member of the Germany Academy for Language and Literature (Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung).

SHOW COMMENTS