Greek Writer Among Favorites for the Nobel Prize in Literature

October 9

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Sotiropoulou has published more than a dozen books of fiction and poetry. Public Domain

Greek writer Ersi Sotiropoulou is among the favorites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature which will be awarded on Thursday.

The World Literature Forum reported she is among the top contenders, recognizing the author’s “lucid exploration of human complexity through ground-breaking prose that examines boundaries between the personal and the political”.

Keeping a low profile the Greek writer said that this is not the first time in recent years that she has appeared as a candidate for the Nobel Prize.

Sotiropoulou published more than a dozen books of fiction and poetry. Her work has been translated into many languages and has won numerous domestic and international awards.

Noted books include Zigzag through the Bitter Orange Trees (English translation by Peter Green), the first novel to win the Greek National Prize for literature and Greece’s leading book critics’ award.

What’s Left of the Night (translated by Karen Emmerich) won France’s 2017 Prix Méditerranée Étranger. Emmerich has also translated her short story collection Landscape with Dog.

Other favorites to win the Nobel Prize for Literature include Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, César Aira, Gerald Murnane, and Thomas Pynchon.

Chinese avant-garde author Can Xue, 71, is the bookies’ favorite to win, with odds of 10/1. She was also the favorite to win last year’s prize, which was ultimately awarded to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.

The 2024 prize recipient will be announced on Thursday. The prize is 11m Swedish kronor, or just over $1m.

Greek writers winning the Nobel Prize in Literature

Two Greek writers have won the Nobel Literature Prize in the past.

Giorgos Seferis in 1963 “for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture,” and Odysseas Elytis in 1979 “for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man’s struggle for freedom and creativeness.”

On December 10, 1963, Greek diplomat and poet Giorgos Seferis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature by King Gustav of Sweden. Seferis was the first Greek to receive the esteemed award.

Seferis’ poetry became known internationally in the 1950’s. He was nominated twice, in 1955 and 1961, before finally receiving the coveted prize.

Seferis, who at the time was bedridden at home because of ill health, said “By selecting a Greek poet for the Nobel Prize, I think the Swedish Academy wanted to express its solidarity with the living, spiritual Greece, the Greece for which so many generations have fought, trying to keep its long cultural tradition alive.”

Odysseas Elytis is regarded as one of Greece’s major poets and a major exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and worldwide.

In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and most of his works have been translated into many languages.

“I would like to believe that with this year’s decision, the Swedish Academy wants to honor in me Greek poetry in its entirety,” Elytis said.

“I would like to think it also wants to draw the attention of the world to a tradition that has gone on since the time of Homer,” he added, “in the embrace of Western civilization.”

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