The Changing World of Literature
Though Amazon may be pushing independently-run bookstores out of business, and many opt for Netflix over a good book on a Thursday night, literature is actively playing a role in shaping our world. From controversy over the 2020 Nobel Prize winner, to full-blown scandal in the Swedish Academy, to new African authors redefining their national literatures, to a female Japanese authors' work being translated by a male, the global literary world is very much alive and relevant today.
Louise Glück Wins Nobel Prize
The most recent noteworthy development for lovers of contemporary writing is the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was recently awarded to Louise Glück this October. The 2020 prize winner is an American poet who won because of her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Glück’s poetry adopts a dark tone, zeroing in on intense emotion and often incorporating mythological and natural images. Using this ancient imagery, Glück writes about the modern experience, gracefully articulating human struggles with trauma and desire. An excerpt from her book, The Seven Ages, touches upon these ideas which the rest of her poems more fully explore:
“Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—
surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects
to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.
I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.”
-Louise Glück, The Seven Ages
In recent years, there have been grumblings that anglophone writers have had a more successful track record with the Nobel Prize jury. The prize went (controversially) to Bob Dylan in 2016, the last American to win the prize before Glück in 2020, though Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro writes in English and was awarded the prize in 2017. Glück’s win is notable because she is a poet, a style of writing which rarely draws the attention of the Nobel committee. The last poet to do so was Tomas Tranströmer, a Swedish poet whose prize, the Tranströmerpriset, was also coincidentally awarded to Glück in 2014. While the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to a poet may be a rare occurrence, the disappointment that yet another anglophone writer has taken home the prize has somewhat tarnished Glück’s win.
Corruption in the Swedish Academy
In a scandal that caused more than mere disappointment, the Nobel Prize for Literature was not awarded in 2018 because of sexual misconduct tied to the Swedish Academy. Founded in 1786, the Swedish Academy is the jury responsible for determining the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and has declined to select a prizewinner just seven times before: during wartime, and when they decided no candidate deserved the award. In 2018 the Swedish media revealed that the husband of an academy member, French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, sexually assaulted Swedish Crown Princess Victoria at an academy event twelve years prior. This story unmasked other accusations against Arnault regarding sexual harassment or assault—eighteen women came forward in November 2018 alone. Many of Arnault’s accusers claim they were assaulted or harassed by Arnault on academy property. This fact, along with Arnault’s marriage to one of the eighteen lifelong-appointed academy members, and his role as a recipient of academy funds, deeply embroils the Swedish Academy in this scandal.
Image Credit: Creative Commons// “Swedish Academy” by clay
Partly as a response to the MeToo movement, seven academy members elected to step down, including its head, Sara Danius, and Arnault’s wife, Katarina Frostenson. Jean-Claude Arnault was convicted in 2018 of two accounts of rape, and is currently serving a prison sentence of (only) two years and six months. In the wake of these accusations and resignations, the Swedish Academy’s prestigious reputation was perhaps irreversibly stained. Though a 2018 winner, Polish writer Olga Tocarczuk, was eventually announced the following year, the Swedish Academy’s public image has yet to recover.
African Writers Redefining African Literature
Image Credit: Creative Commons/"South African Literature" by Alexander Smolianitski
In more inspiring literary news, a strong wave of African writers is redefining modern African literature. Writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Patrice Nganang, and Imbolo Mbue are influential contemporary writers bringing African literature to the forefront of literary discussion. Perhaps one of the most popular examples of African literature is Chinua Achebe’s 1958 Things Fall Apart, which details life in Nigeria before the arrival of colonial Europeans in the late 19th century. A more recently-written novel, When the Plums are Ripe (2018) by Cameroonian author Patrice Nganang, explores similar themes of colonisation, power, and legacy. Translated into English from its original French, Nganang sets his story in World-War-II-era Cameroon: African men are made into soldiers and forced to fight for France, their colonizers.
Adjacent to this uniquely African historical perspective, Nigerian author Lesley Nneka Arimah deliberately covers the universal human experience in her work. Nneka describes herself as a pessimist; according to her, we are all “doomed,” and she is “simply imagining different potential futures.” Her short story, Skinned (which was awarded the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing), is set in a generic, unnamed city. In this dystopian future, unmarried (“unclaimed”) women cannot wear clothing. Although the characters—Ejem, Chidinma, and Odinaka—have Igbo names (a language of Southeastern Nigeria), the story may realistically take place anywhere on Earth; the Nigerian context is not central to the story, rather, it focuses on globally-experienced themes of class, social taboo, and human interaction.
Image Credit: Unsplash//Suad Kamardeen
These writers are creating literature against a highly-politicized backdrop; in an article about African literature, Zambian writer Namwali Serpell writes, “whenever African writers are on a panel together, we are asked about the continent as a whole—its literature, its future, its political woes and economic potential.” This same article quotes Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who speaks out against the expectation for African writers to provide a glossary of terms that would be unfamiliar to Western readers. Adichie argues that when there is this pervasive need to be accessible to a foreign audience, “you’re explaining your world rather than inhabiting your world.”
Male Translators for Feminist Texts?
Like Lesley Nneka Arimah, Japanese writer and poet Meiko Kawakami strives for universality in her work. Her recent novel Breasts and Eggs, which centers around female characters (their relationships with one another, their relationships with their own bodies, femininity, etc.) was translated into English from Japanese by a man, a decision which raised some questioning eyebrows. When asked about her selection of a male translator in an interview for the Toronto International Festival of Authors, Kawakami said she prioritized age over gender. Kawakami pointed out that while the female experience is explored and is central to the novel, Breasts and Eggs is not exclusively feminist, rather it functions as a book about human beings. Many of the novel’s themes revolve around the uncontrollable aspects of human life, gender included. The novel discusses poverty, parentage, and one’s lack of control over being born into a human body in general. Kawakami is one of Japan’s most widely-read, distinguished writers; her work includes Breasts and Egg, as well as Heaven, Ms. Ice Sandwich, and J’adore.
Image Credit: Unsplash//Dainis Graveris
In sum, the global literary world is as alive and dynamic as ever. Furthermore, world literature raises questions about the globalised world we live in like: why are anglophone writers more likely to be chosen for the Nobel Prize for Literature, or why are Nigerian writers expected to italicise Igbo words for the sake of foreign audiences? The literary world is one not independent from scandal or controversy, but it is also a stage on which young writers are shaping their national literatures, as well as exploring questions relatable to all humanity.
