At a few seconds past 1300 hrs the doors of the inner sanctuary of the Swedish Academy opened and reveal Sara Danius dressed in black with a few sheets of foolscap paper in her hand announced to the world's assembled press reporters and photographers first in Swedish , then in English, French and German that Svetlana Alexievich is this year's Nobel Laureate in Literature with the motivation "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time".
The second she appeared in that Black dress – some kinda pathetic fallacy in action - I thought that there was a remote possibility that the coronation of Ngugi Wa Thiongo was at hand but this time more or less by universal popular acclaim Svetlana's literary reportages are being rewarded. It's a genre of literature that has its antecedent in e.g. Ryszard Kapuscinski who also popularised the genre
Advocacy for this genre (the literary reportage and Witness Literature appeared in the New Yorker a year ago: Nonfiction Deserves a Nobel
She is going to have some sweet dreams tonight
As usual literary gossip and much speculation preceded the latest announcement, not least of all in the Swedish media - in this morning's SvD Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is placed at Number 5
Speculation of course will continue right up to the Nobel Lecture and the Nobel Banquet and beyoListserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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