Since being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature last week, Bob Dylan has yet to react. On the occasion of her 70th birthday, DW looks back at another reluctant winner: Austrian author and playwright Elfriede Jelinek.
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Ever since Bob Dylan was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature last week, the iconic poet-musician has been out of touch, at least for the Swedish Academy.
"We haven't established direct contact with Bob Dylan yet," the academy's permanent secretary, Sara Danius, told the Associated Press on Tuesday. "It would be delightful if Dylan wanted to come to Stockholm in December [to accept his award], but if he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to."
Dylan's reluctance to acknowledge the honor brings to mind Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek, who was chosen for the prestigious literary award in 2004. Since being singled out by the Swedish Academy, Jelinek, who turns 70 on Thursday, has noticeably withdrawn from public view. In the 1980s and 1990s, she often played the role of the sharp-tongued moralist. Today, she only rarely gives interviews.
Her latest play, "Wut" (Anger), premiered to great acclaim back in April at the Munich Kammerspiele. Its focus: the rage of religious fanatics and the anger of supposedly decent citizens.
During a recent performance of Jelinek's play "Die Schutzbefohlenen" (The Suppliants), which takes on Europe's asylum policies, a group of right-wing extremists burst into the theater in Vienna, splattering artificial blood and throwing flyers with the slogan "Multikulti tötet" (Multiculturalism kills) into the crowd. It seems Jelinek continues to agitate - at least in Austria.
Winner of multiple awards
Jelinek, a former communist, has developed the reputation of a radical feminist and provocateur, whose work is well regarded, but, as "Der Spiegel" points out, difficult for many to appreciate. She has been decried as a "desecrator of art and culture," denigrated as a "red pornographer."
"The press took possession of Jelinek with an almost obscene zeal, and plastered her on the front pages and billboards," said Austrian writer Olga Flor in a column for the Viennese newspaper "Der Standard." For Austria, any critical appreciation of Jelinek's contribution to the arts on her 70th birthday is likely to be difficult.
Her body of work includes novels, plays, poems, radio plays, essays and scripts. In Austria and Germany, Jelinek, who divides her time between Vienna and Munich, has been honored with all the important awards - the Heinrich Böll Prize from the city of Cologne (1986), the Georg Büchner Prize (1998), four Mülheim Drama Prizes (2002, 2004, 2009, 2011), as well as War Blinded Audio Play Prize (2004).
Paying tribute to Jelinek when she received the Büchner Prize, critic Ivan Nagel called her a "storyteller of utmost refinement and skill." Her work is relentlessly realistic, almost intolerable, "but it is great and necessary."
For decades, Jelinek has been writing against abuses in public life and politics, but also about private life in Austrian society. She makes use of a sarcastic, provocative and - for that reason - disturbing style. Many of her works revolve around the suppression of Austria's Nazi past, increasing xenophobia and the rise of right-wing populists.
Troubled childhood
Jelinek, born in the eastern Austrian town of Mürzzuschlag on October 20, 1946, grew up in Vienna. As a young woman, she dealt with her father's neuropathy and her own mental problems. Under the influence of her "demonic" mother, Jelinek said she was "trained" as a child prodigy in dance and music. She said she began writing to escape her mother's patronizing, dominating behavior.
The debates about her novels, poems and plays have surely not passed her by. Her 1989 novel, "Lust," skewered a male and class-dominated society, denouncing the sexual oppression of women. In the 1983 book "The Piano Teacher," she criticized violence committed behind closed doors, while in "Stecken, Stab und Stangl" (Rod, Staff, and Crook, 1995), she scandalized with her criticism of the media and political reaction to the murders of four Roma in eastern Austria.
When the news came of her Nobel win in 2004, even her Berlin publishing house was surprised. She declined to attend the award ceremony in Stockholm, saying she was "not in a mental shape to withstand such ceremonies." She might be in good company - if Dylan ends up doing the same and stays home in December.
Nobel Literature Prize: The past 20 winners
Bob Dylan, Svetlana Alexievich, Annie Ernaux and now Han Kang. Here's a look back at the last 20 laureates of the prestigious literary award.
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2024: Han Kang
Han Kang is the first South Korean author to win the Nobel Prize in literature, recognizing "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life." Her publication debut came as a poet in 1993; the Man Booker International Prize for fiction, awarded to her in 2016 for her novel "The Vegetarian," marked her global breakthrough.
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2023: Jon Fosse
The Norwegian playwright has had 1,000 productions of his plays staged in more than 50 languages. He is also the author of novels, poetry and children's books. The Nobel Prize committee selected the writer "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." He is shown here at the National Book Awards in 2022, where he was a nominee for "A New Name: Septology VI-VII."
The French author, born in 1940, is renowned for her autobiographical prose works that go "beyond fiction in the narrow sense," said the Swedish Academy. Among others, her 2001 book "Happening" deals with her illegal abortion from the 1960s. She was selected "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory."
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2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah
Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism," said the Swedish Academy. "His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world."
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2020: Louise Glück
Crowned with the Nobel Prize in literature in 2020, the American poet and essayist had already won major awards in the US, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, as well as the National Humanities Medal, which was presented by Barack Obama in 2016. Her most notable works include the "The Triumph of Achilles" (1985) and "The Wild Iris" (1992).
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2019: Peter Handke
The Austrian author born in 1942 became famous with experimental plays such as "Offending the Audience" in 1966. He also co-wrote Wim Wenders films, including "Wings of Desire." The decision to award Handke the Nobel Prize was criticized since he is also known for his controversial positions on the Yugoslav wars. In 2014, he had also called the prize to be abolished, dubbing it a "circus."
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2018: Olga Tokarczuk
The Polish writer was actually awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in 2019, since it had been postponed for a year following scandals affecting the Swedish Academy, the body that chooses the laureates for the award. A two-time winner of Poland's top literary prize, the Nike Award, Tokarczuk was also honored in 2010 with the Man Booker International Prize for her novel "Flights."
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2017: Kazuo Ishiguro
Japan-born British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer Kazuo Ishiguro won the 2017 award. His most renowned novel, "The Remains of the Day" (1989), was adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. His works deal with memory, time and self-delusion.
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2016: Bob Dylan
An atypical but world famous laureate: US songwriter Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016. The Swedish Academy selected Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
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2015: Svetlana Alexievich
Calling her work "a monument to suffering and courage in our time," the Swedish Academy honored the Belarusian author and investigative journalist in 2015. Alexievich is best known for her emotive firsthand accounts of war and suffering, including "War's Unwomanly Face" (1985) and "Voices from Chernobyl" (2005).
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2014: Patrick Modiano
The French writer's stories describe a universe of haunted cities, absentee parents, criminality and lost youths. They are all set in Paris with the shadow of World War II looming heavily in the background. The Swedish Academy described the novelist, whose work has often focused on the Nazi occupation of France, as "a Marcel Proust of our time."
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2013: Alice Munro
Canadian writer Alice Munro is no stranger to accolades, having received the Man Booker International Prize and the Canadian Governor General Literary Award three times over. The Swedish Academy called her a "master of the contemporary short story."
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2012: Mo Yan
Guan Moye, better known under his pen name Mo Yan, was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." The decision was criticized by Chinese dissidents like artist Ai Weiwei, who claimed Mo Yan was too close to the Chinese Communist Party and did not support fellow intellectuals who faced political repression
The academy chose Tomas Gosta Transtromer as the winner in 2011 "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." In the 1960s, the Swedish poet worked as a psychologist at a center for juvenile offenders. His poetry has been translated into over 60 languages.
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2010: Mario Vargas Llosa
The Peruvian novelist received the Nobel Prize "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." In Latin America, he is famous for uttering the phrase "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship" on TV in 1990 and for punching his once-friend and fellow Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in the face in 1976.
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2009: Herta Müller
The German-Romanian author was awarded the Nobel Prize as a writer "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." She is noted for her work criticizing the repressive communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, which she experienced herself. Müller writes in German and moved to West Berlin in 1987.
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2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio
The Swedish Academy called J.M.G. Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization." Le Clezio was born in Nice, France, in 1940 to a French mother and a Mauritian father. He holds dual citizenship and calls Mauritius his "little fatherland."
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2007: Doris Lessing
The 11th woman to win the award since its creation in 1901, British author Doris May Lessing (1919-2013) wrote novels, plays and short stories. The Nobel Prize recognized her for being a writer "who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny." She also campaigned against nuclear weapons and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
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2006: Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures," was the first Turkish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. With more than 13 million books sold, he is Turkey's bestselling writer. Pamuk was born in Istanbul and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York City.
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2005: Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," was awarded the Nobel Prize three years before his death from liver cancer. He died on Christmas Eve in 2008. The British playwright directed and acted in many radio and film productions of his own work. In total, he received more than 50 awards.
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