The problem is that we think the literary world revolves around Nigeria and Africa. We think the Nobel Academy should always pander to our literary tastes in its choice of the winner/awardee of the prize
THE announcement of laureates in the six categories of the Nobel prize has become an annual ritual people look forward to as the month of October inches closer. Millions of people across the globe take vicarious pleasure in participating, even if virtually, in the intellectual feast taking place in Stockholm. The African elite are not exempted. It appears, however, that the elite have reconciled themselves to the ugly fact that the continent canโt hold its own in the sciences. This is not because it lacks the human capital, no, we have that in surfeit; the continent is enormously blessed. The deficiency in sciences is informed by dearth of modern facilities and tools, the enabling environment, that can encourage our scientists to invest their time and energies in research that would birth innovations and inventions worthy of global recognition. Aware of this, most Africans have content themselves with the literature category of the Nobel prize. This is understandable as Wole Soyinka, a black man of towering intellectual ability, had set a precedent decades ago by clinching the prize in that category.
Therefore, every year literary enthusiasts in Africa turn their gaze to Stockholm in anticipation of a new cohort of Nobel laureates from the Swedish Academy. However, there are some recurring motifs in the conversation on the Nobel Prize for literature in Nigeria that demand interrogation. This,ย xactly, is what this piece seeks to do under two broad sub-headings.
On the obscurity of Han Kang
ITโS no longer news that the Swedish Academy has awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in literature to the 53-year-old South Korean author, Han Kang,ย for her โintense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human lifeโ.
But prior to the announcement, while people around the world were waiting with bated breath to knowย the writer who would beย garlanded with a Nobel medal and ushered into the pantheon of literary greats, a lover of literature in Nigeria took to his Facebook page to bring up the trite issue of obscurity
He wrote: โThe Swedish Academy will soon tell us the winner of this yearโs Nobel Prize in Literature. As usual, they will select an โobscureโ writer as laureate.โ
No sooner had the Swedish Academy announced Han asย the 2024 winner of the Nobel prize in literature than literary aficionados, expecting another writer other than the South Korean author to be awarded the prize, started whipping up the โobscurityโ sentiments.
These people thought Han didnโt deserve the award because theyโd never heard or read her before that very day.
A Nigerian, who is an author of young adultsโ literature with at least12 titles under his belt, contributing to the conversation on social media wrote:
โMe too! With all my extensive readings I have neither heard or read of her. Prizes hardly promote books or writers. It is the book that does. Itโs time we go for our own Nobel Prize.โ
These commenters failed to realise that no matter how extensive we think we have read there will always be one or two writers of renown outside our range of extensive reading. Even if one chose to live in cloistered seclusion, something like a monastery, doing nothing else but immersed in reading books one wouldnโt read all literary canon. To adopt this way of life, we all know, is to court utter uselessness with misery into the bargain.
Another point brought up by Hanโs detractors was her oeuvre which they claimed to be paltry. The South Korean has written five novels with the sixth one, โWe Do Not Partโ, in the works according to Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Hanโs novel,ย the new book will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.
Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature with just five novels isnโt unprecedented or deplorable. The late Toni Morrison, another woman on the list of firsts like Han, won the prize in 1993 months after publishing โJazzโ, her sixth novel.
Most of the literary enthusiasts criticising Han on this count would have celebrated Achebe if he had won the prize in 1986 than his compatriot, Soyinka, was awarded it. Achebe had written just four major novels in 1986, thatโs excluding childrenโs literature and other non-fictional works. The great author would later add, โAnthills of the Savannahโ to his oeuvre in 1987. He never added any more novels in his next 26 years of existence.
Han is not an obscure writer by any metrics we choose to assess her works. She started writing poems in 1993 and published her first novel, โThe Vegetarianโ in 2007.
For this book, Han Kang won the International Booker Prize in 2016, the first Korean Language book to do so. The book was listed in New York Timesโ โ100 Best Books of the 21st Centuryโ. It sold over 350,000 copies across all formats and has been translated into 24 languages since it was published.
Someone who has been writing consistently for over three decades, trying her hands on different genres of literature, is an established writer.
Someone who won Man Booker International Prize years ago is not an obscure writer. Our own great Achebe won the prize, too in the twilight of his life. The problem is that we think the literary world revolves around Nigeria and Africa. We think the Nobel Academy should always pander to our literary tastes in its choice of the winner/awardee of the prize.
Our own Woleย Soyinka must have been deemed obscure by millions around the world the year he was awarded the prize, too. But to us in Nigeria he was a writer of stature even in 1986. When แนขรณyรญnkรก won the Nobel Prize in 1986, V.S Naipaul was reported to have said: โHas he written anything?โ โThe Swedish Academy has โpissed on literature from great heightsโ, Naipaul added. We may say he made the statement out of envy, but he was entitled to his opinion. Naipaul would later win the award in 2001. Chinweizu Ibekwe, a feisty critic and Soyinkaโs compatriot did not spare the playwright as well. Reacting to Soyinka winning the coveted prize, he said, โThe undesirable (the Swedish Academy, I guess) honouring the unreadable (WS)โ Wow! That must be intended to be a kick in the groin. Whether the kick โ or more accurately the barb โ hit the target is another case entirely. This goes without saying that the award will always generate a torrent of reactions, especially from those whose favourites are bypassed. However, our engagement or conversation must be done within the confines of decency without seeking to discredit the awarder or the awardee.
HAN has also been criticised for choosing to write in her native language. This criticism holds no water. Itโs sheer provincialism for those of us in the Anglophone world to think writing in the English language places us over and above other writers using languages other than English. Gabrielย Garcia Marquez, didnโt write his Magnus opus โOne Hundred Years of Solitudeโ in English but was awarded the Nobel Prize, likewise his friend and fellow laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa. Pablo Neruda, andย Tomas Transtromer were poets of note and Nobel Prize winners. In their lifetimes, they never wrote a line in English. Yet their works resonate with readers across the globe.
When Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish author, was awarded the prize in 2006 many literary buffs criticised the Swedish Academy for โfalling short of expectationsโ whatever the expression means! I remember telling a guy living in the same hostel โ ETF Hall โ with me that Pamuk deserved the award. The guy, a final year English and Literary Studies student argued with me for hours, he refused to accept my view. Perhaps Pamukโs name didnโt ring a bell and he hadnโt heard or read any of his works before the author reached his careerโs capstone. Pamukโs Nobel Lecture, โMy Fatherโs Suitcaseโ in my assessment, is one of the most intriguing and brilliant lectures ever delivered by a Nobel laureate.
IN 2009 while rummaging through a pile of โsecond-hand booksโ at Ikeja Along Underbridge in Lagos, I stumbled โ through sheer serendipity โ onย โDivisaderoโย by Michael Ondaatje. I flipped through the pages of the book, then read 10 random pages. My eyes were captivated by waves of luminous prose glistening on the pages of the book. โWhoโs this again?โ I asked myself. I checked the blurb and realised he had won the Booker Prize with his book:,The English Patient โ years earlier. I contacted Femi Fairchild Morgan and ordered a copy of the English Patient. That was my encounter with Ondaatje, the beginning of a relationship that has lasted to date.
Should the Canadian author be awarded the Nobel Prize tomorrow some critics will call him โobscureโ. Oh! he might escape cheap jibes from theย Nigerian readers wallowing in audacious ignorance because he writes in English.
Letโs get this fact straight: Who wins what prize is at the discretion of the Nobel Academy and not by popular consensus. Any writer bypassed in their lifetime by the Academy will be in good company in death. Who wouldnโt want to be in company of Vladimir Nabokov, Achebe, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Jorge Louis Borges, Milan Kundera to mention but a few.?
The beauty โ or one of the beauties โ of the Nobel Prize inย literature is that it keeps adding new authors, without fail, yearly to your growing list of writers of global renown.
On Selection Process, Eurocentrism, Mentor-Protegรฉ Binary etc.
FOR over a century, the Swedish Academy has kept its selection process under wraps. Nobody, apart from members of the Academy, can say with certainty how the winner in each category of the Nobel Prize is decided. However, anyone who has been monitoring events at Stockholm for years will admit that there is an unspoken rotational method of selecting winners, particularly in the literature category.
THE secrecy that attends awarding of the prize is upheld to strengthen its mystique and esotericism. No prior announcement of nominees, no interviews conducted or granted to give clues on who might emerge winner in each category. Like a lightning bolt, names just start โdroppingโ and sometimes our jaws follow suit due to the shock that comes with who is bypassed and who, against the grain, is awarded the praise.
Nevertheless, the esotericism adds to the beauty of the award. Itโs one of the reasons we await the announcement from Stockholm with bated breath. However, I think to make awarding the prize, literature in particular, easier the Academy adopted what I earlier called an unspoken rotational method which ensures no continent is deliberately left out of the roll-call of honour.
However, many literary enthusiasts in Nigeria have not observed this or maybe theyโre deliberately disingenuous. Reason they come up with petty ascriptions to rationalise their favourite writersโ failure to clinch the prize. One of such ascription is eurocentrism.ย Eurocentrism has been flogged to death in explaining why Achebe didnโt win the prize and touted as the reason Ngugi remains a perennial candidate. I canโt remember the number of times I have read about how Achebeโs critique of Joseph Conradโs โHeart of Darknessโ and Joyce Caryโs โMister Johnsonโ cost him the Nobel Prize. On the surface it sounds plausible but when you probe deeper, armed with the knowledge voracious reading offers,ย you will realise that this line of thought is nothing but convenient excuse. Achebe is a great writer even in death. Like Soyinka said after the writerโs passing, โAchebeโs place in the global canon of literature is assuredโ.
This is absolutely true even without the Nobel Prize. But Soyinka said something else in that interview thatโs quite noteworthy. Clannish and opportunistic hagiographers in a bid to canonise Achebe often denigrate the Nobel Prize and what it represents. Expressions like โAchebe winning the Nobel Prize would have lent credibility to the award,โ โThe Swedish Academy needs Achebe more than the writer needs the prizeโ and many of such submissions that have become a catchphrase among the numberless fans of the great author are rooted in sheer consolation. These claims often appear like a classic case of โsour grapeโ which Iโm sure the inimitable Achebe wonโt like to associate himself with.
โWherever something stands, something else must stand beside itโ, is an often quoted Igbo proverb by Achebe. According to the novelist, the proverb speaks of the principle of duality and difference enshrined in Igbo philosophy. The credibility of the Nobel Prize, just like the legacy of Achebe, is assured even if our great author failed to win it in his lifetime.
I do not share the opinion that the Swedish Academy didnโt award Achebe its prize because he wrote back to the empire as we say, or for being at the forefront of campaign for Afrocentrism. There are thousands of beautiful birds preening their bright plumage in the literary firmament and the Swedish Academy are always spoilt for choice each year. Who among the African writers who won the prize in Achebe lifetime can be said to be undeserving of it? Is it Nadine Godimer, J.M Coetzee or Naguib Mahfouz? I think Achebe wasnโt just lucky to have the award. Simple! Yet it detracts nothing from his literary standing. When it comes to awards there is an element of luck that comes into play, despite a winnerโs talent or prodigious oeuvre.
CONTRIBUTINGย to the Nobel Prize conversation on Facebook another commenter wondered why the Swedish Academy bypassed Ngugi wa ThiongโOย and handed the prestigious prize to AbdulRazaq Gurnah. He noted that Gurnah had acknowledged at various fora that Ngugi was/is his teacher. This brings us to what I term, the โMentor-Protegรฉ Binaryโ. That a writer at a point in his writing trajectory chooses another elderly or established writer as his mentor does not mean the protegรฉ will forever be under the shadow of that mentor. There comes a time when a protege charts his own literary course and decides to move away from under his mentorโs wings. Sometimes, familiarity breeds contempt and the protege may later become an inveterate enemy of his erstwhile mentor as it was the case with V.S Naipaul and Paul Theorux which space wonโt permit me to dwell on.
However, I donโt think the Swedish Academy put this extremely personal affair into consideration when awarding the Nobel prize. The Nobel Prize is awarded largely โ maybe strictly โ on the strength of an authorโs writing prowess as reflected by his oeuvre.
Joseph Brodsky spent years under the tutelage of Anna Akmatova before โthe social parasiteโ as the Russian government dubbed the poet exiled from Russia. He showed Akhmatova nothing but respect till he breathed his last. Yet,ย Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature while the honour eluded his teacher. Brodsky was effusive with praise for Akmatova. The literature laureate even eulogised her in his Nobel Lecture
Coming back home, Niyi Osundare always says Soyinka is (is the operative word here) his teacher. He says it unabashedly in any gathering. Butย Osundareโs poems are more lyrical and beautiful than Soyinkaโs. If I were to preside over a panel awarding a poetry prize I would choose Osundareโs poetry collection over Soyinkaโs. Wouldnโt that be a classic case of a student beating his master to a prize?
Another factor people donโt consider is the recency of a literary work. When last did Ngugi write a book?
I was not expecting the revered literary giant to win it this year. Not when an African writer โ or one whose ancestry can be traced to Africa โ won it recently.ย AbdulRazaq Gurnah was awarded the 2021 edition of the prize. Ngugiโwa ThiongโO is now a towering literary lighthouse that guides young writers globally on how to navigate the tempestuous literary sea and berth safely on the shore of achievements. The preoccupation of the literary icon in the evening of his life shouldnโt be the Nobel Prize but his legacy.
I donโt think the Swedish Academy gave the award to Gurnah to spite Ngugi just as it didnโt hand the prize to Wole Soyinka to prove that his greatness put Achebeโs in the shade as some people want us to believe.
The essence of the Nobel Prize in Literature is to celebrate creativity. The award is to reward the taxing job of marrying sensations with apt words in solitude. It is to give recognition to those who reach to the depths of their souls to fashion out beauties and honour the discipline that undergirds it all
The October of every year should not be a time to bicker, but a moment to revel in the vibrant malleability of language and the human unrivalled ability to forge theย creative lines that can join art and life
The announcement or revelation of an author as winner of a prestigious award whether we know the awardee or not, whether theyโre our favourite or not, should be greeted with: Why are we so blest?(apologies to Ayei Kwe Armah)
*Kolawole, a journalist and freelance writer, writes from Lagos.
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