4 ms·

If you look at the list of nominees it's not exactly a mark of lasting impact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nominees_for_the_Nobel_Prize_in_Literatur

• dhosek 2y ago
  Nominees don’t really mean that much. The list of nominators allows for a lot of people to be put forward. The list of actual laureates is probably better to look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Lit... And given the global nature of the award, it’s not necessarily surprising if many of the names are unfamiliar. I’m pretty familiar with writers in English, but would have a hard time naming more than a dozen German authors and more than three or four Scandinavian authors. Scanning the list for authors who wrote exclusively in English the only unfamiliar names were Wole Soyinka and Abdulrazak Gurnah which is as much an indictment of my unfamiliarity with African writers as anything else.
  • readthenotes1 2y ago
    I knew of less than half the winners and I read a fair amount. If they were impactful, they would have been translated...