Premiul Nobel pentru Literatura by Claudia Sonea

The Nobel Prize in Literature was highly regarded at the beginning, but in time its fairness started to be questioned. The criteria on which a book is elected as the winner are not known and most of the times it seems that there is a political connection. Furthermore, most of the winners are Europeans, while the Sweden themselves received the most prizes from all the other Asian countries. Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Emil Zola, Mark Twain, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, John Updike are just some of the brilliant authors who did not receive the prize, although their works influenced literature worldwide. So how reliable ! are the members of the Nobel Prize in Literature committee? No one can tell for sure, but it is certain that one of the main principles that a competition requires is not fulfilled. The members of the committee should not compete or it would be preposterous to compete and then actually win, which in fact happened in 1974. Herta Mueller won this year’s Nobel Prize with her works on the communist regime in Romania. Although, it should be an honour for Romania that someone born and bred on its soil won such an illustrious award, the painful truth is that there are many other writers, far better than Mueller who were not even taken into account. Besides, the prize is given again for a period that most Romanians are either trying to forget, either dream to come back. Most probably the fact that this year we celebrate the 20th anniversary since the communism collapsed was one of the criteria for which Mueller was chosen. Wh! at a disgrace on the good name of Alfred Nobel who aspired to ! perfecti on, to an ideal of fairness and to a merit-based society. The controversy throws a cloud even upon the other authors that won and actually deserved the prize. Yet, all we can do is to accept the decision that the Swedish committee took and consider that after all nothing changed since the communists. Enjoy!

related story (sgx15583): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_on_re_eu/eu_nobel_lit...

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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