This Thursday the Swedish academy will make public the name of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, an award for which both renowned authors and cult writers with an extensive career count. However, despite the bets and lists of possibilities, the result is usually a surprise.
63 years old, born in Haugesund, Norway
Known above all for his narrative and theatrical work, he has also cultivated essays, poetry and children's literature. He published his first novel in 1983, Raudt, svart (Red, Black), and here you can read both his Trilogy, published in one volume, and his Septalogy in four volumes, published by De Conatus, which he also co-published with Nørdica Morning and Afternoon . Also considered one of the greatest contemporary playwrights, with works translated into more than 40 languages and more than a thousand performances, several of his plays have also been performed and published in Spain.
Among the distinctions he has achieved, in 2007 he was named to the French National Order of Merit in 2007.
70 years old, born in Changsha, China
Deng Xiaohua, known as Can Xue, is one of the most representative authors of the avant-garde movement of the late eighties and early nineties and one of the most important authors of contemporary China. She began publishing short stories and literary criticism and her first work, Old Floating Cloud, dates back to 1986.
His writing portrays the absurdity of the world and the impossibility of understanding it. She has always been very interested in Western literature and Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino are authors who have especially influenced her.
84 years old, born in Melbourne, Australia
Gerald Murnane was described by The New York Times as “the greatest living writer in the English language that most have not heard of.” Tamarisk Row (1974) and A Lifetime on Clouds (1976) are the first two works published by the Australian author, two semi-autobiographical stories that are based on his childhood and adolescence. The plains, published in 1982 – it arrived here in 2014 by Minúscula in Spanish and Catalan – is considered a metaphysical parable about reality and a paradoxical examination of cultural and traditional horizons. According to critics, this is the novel that best exemplifies the writer's style.
67 years old, born in Bucharest, Romania
The author is known for portraying contemporary European life. He is one of Romania's most internationally renowned writers and is considered one of the fathers of Romanian postmodernism. He has won practically all the literary awards in his country and also international awards, such as the Berlin Literature Prize 2012 and the Gregor von Rezzori Prize in 2016.
85 years old, born in Kamirithu, Kenya
A living legend of African letters, he has been honored throughout his career with various awards, including the International Catalunya Prize, which recognized the author's work for writing in a minority language, Gikuyu, and for his Africanist activism.
The author, one of the eternal contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature, went into exile from his country in the 1980s fleeing the dictatorship of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi and settled in the United States. Currently, he works as a professor of English and Literature at the University of California.
73 years old, born in Santiago de Chile
Raúl Zurita, Chilean poet of Italian descent, stands out for his artistic sensitivity, his harsh childhood and his imprisonment during the Pinochet dictatorship. The torture to which he was subjected fueled his thirst for justice, leading him to lead a series of cultural activities to promote the importance of communication and free expression.
His work has won the Pablo Neruda Prize, the National Prize for Literature or the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry, among many others. Among his publications stand out Anteparaíso, The Dead Poems, and his essay On Love, Suffering and the New Millennium.
65 years old, born in Song, Henin, China
A writer from a poor region in Henan province, Lianke is today one of the most prominent authors in his country of origin. He began writing propaganda for China's army and is today one of the country's most critical and controversial authors. Among his books translated into Spanish, Lenin's Kisses, The Four Books, nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, and The Dream of the Ding Village, also published in Catalan, stand out. In 2021 he won the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature.
93 years old, born in Al Qassabin, Syria
He is one of the eternal contenders for the Nobel Prize, although in recent years he had been relegated in the betting, he is considered the best poet in the Arabic language. Born Ahmad Said Esber and living in Paris since he emigrated in 1980 escaping the Lebanese civil war, his work has often been translated in Spain, both his poetry and several of his essays.
69 years old, born in Jerusalem, Israel
Grossman is considered one of the greatest Israeli writers, a literary success that has also served him to raise his voice in the name of peace activism, often with other writers from his country such as Amos Oz and Abraham Yehoshua. He began working as a correspondent and television presenter, and his first books focused on children's literature, but in 1983 he began working on literature for adults. His works have been widely translated into Spanish and Catalan – the latest, Life Plays with Me (Lumen / Edicions 62), and several of them have been made into films.
87 years old, born in Gjirokastra, Albania
Novelist, poet, essayist and playwright, in addition to having been a cultural journalist, Kadaré's literary success came very early, as it came with his first novel, The Dead Army General, when he was barely 27 years old. After publishing in 1981 the denunciation of totalitarianism The Palace of Dreams, a work that was banned, his political problems began, until in 1990 he went into exile to France, from where he returned to his country in 1999. Among others, he has been winner of the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, as well as the International Booker.
