A Swedish Perspective on the Nobel Literature Prize: A Discussion with Yukiko Duke

Yukiko Duke is a cultural critic, journalist and editor of the Swedish literary magazine. She is also the artistic director of the Stockholm annual literary festival.

The Swedes are a reading people. But the readership rate has been declining. Sales of books are down as is the usage of public libraries, probably due to the many different ways of getting cultural information, such as through the internet or Netflix. Thus, there is no need to read anymore. But during the pandemic, book sales soared. People realized the important role played by literature in connecting with the times as well as learning about the past, the world and the self. The education reform instilled by the social democrats since the early 20^th century ensured every child had a chance to read and have access to an academic education. Therefore, Swedes read. Unlike Hong Kong which also has universal education, the Swedes do not measure success by material wealth.

The Nobel prize doesn’t hold the same weight in Sweden as it does in some other countries. Sweden has many literary prizes whose winners are more accessible to the reader. The prestige of the Nobel is important to booksellers, but not so for the Swedish literary audience. Nobel prize winners tend to be either story tellers or language innovators. The language innovators tend to be difficult to read and are less relevant to the ordinary reader.

The Swedish Academy, founded in 1768, is a very influential cultural institution. The Nobel is the prize of the prizes and the Swedes do look forward to this great literary event. But two events have led to a diminishing interest and respect for the Nobel prize.

The first was the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989. The Academy is supposed to support free speech and intellectual freedom, but it did nothing at the time. Three members resigned.

The second was the 2018 Me Too sex scandal which shook the Academy from within and from the outside. Equality is extremely important for the Swedes, and women are strong. This scandal ‘pulled the [Academy’s} underpants down’, and nobody wanted to see this.

The Academy was regarded by the Swedes as a strong unshakable institution that was above all doubts and affairs. Both these events were shocking for the Swedes as they tainted the Academy, and by extension, the Nobel prize. The Academy took a long while to clear its name, but its reputation had been tarnished. The disgrace of the institution was of greater concern to the Swedes.

The Swedes feel the Academy has a responsibility to uphold the ideals of the prize as espoused in Alfred Nobel’s will. But its structural flaws that make this a difficult task. For one, works need to be translated. The Academy relies on PEN associations, writers’ associations and former Nobel laureates who promote writers they think should get the prize. Sometimes there are writers in languages that Academy members cannot read, so translations are ordered. For example, there was not a single work by Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian laureate in 1988, that had been translated into Swedish. But the Academy understood that the Arabic speaking world were unified in having Mahfouz’s works recognized, and so commissioned 4 to 5 works for translations and found others that had been translated into languages they could read.

The Academy has limitations. All members can read western languages but not so for Asian and African ones, thus the predominance of western literature prize winners. This is something that is being addressed through its network that helps pick writers from different parts of the world. For example, the 2021 laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah was a surprise choice as nobody knew this Tanzanian author who actually wrote in English. The Academy is trying to rectify the imbalance between western and non-western as well as male and female writers.

Winners are chosen based on literary merit and whether their works are interesting and deal with the human condition and how the world exists. Public expectations are not a consideration. Academy members have different views which results in power plays between regions and countries. Göran Malmqvist the sinologue pushed very strongly for Mo Yan (2012) as well as Gao Xinjiang (2000). Gabriel García Márquez (1982) had many friends in the Academy who were knowledgeable about Latin literature. Per Wästberg, the champion for African literature pushed for Nadine Gordimer (1991).

Although winners are difficult to predict, Kazuo Ishiguro (2017) was considered a popular choice. He is a talented story teller. Story tellers are easier to read than the language innovators and can become liked and popular. But when writers are too easy to read, they tend not to get the prize. Notable is Graham Greene, perhaps deemed uninteresting and not innovative enough by the Academy’s standards. Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood have probably been on the list for many years but have never won. They are all too popular and have published a few too many works.

As a translator of both Haruki Murakami and Kenzaburō Ōe (1994 Nobel prize), Duke considers them both very successful at expressing what goes on in Japanese society and its dark side, even if they are of different generations. Ōe tells of Japan’s modernization post World War II that created an anxiety as the change was happening too fast. People had a traditional mindset but were forced into modern living. Murakami is of the generation after Ōe and had no connection with traditional culture yet did not really feel part of the new modern American society in which they were living, which also creates an anxiety. His characters are mostly drifters who have no place in society as they are unable to choose the kind of life they live. The younger Japanese writers today, and many are women, such as Hiromi Kawakami, write about issues that have not been previously dealt with. Such as what it is like to be Korean-Japanese amid the racial discrimination, what it means to have an abusive father or mothers who don’t or can’t care. The anxiety is still prevalent.