: Ralph Gunther
: Giants in their Field: An Introduction to the Nobel Prizes in Literature
: Digitalia
: 9781882528011
: 1
: CHF 62.80
:
: Gesellschaft
: English
: 556
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF

A complete guide to Nobel Prizes in literature from Sully-Prudhomme to Derek Walcott (1901-1992), which can appeal to all readers as a source of documented facts and interesting anecdotes. It contains year-by-year summaries of literary events, parallel lives of laureates, concise biographies, lists of major works, and extensive tables in appendices (32pp.). 

“Brillante estudio ... con una documentación amplísima ... interesante e instructiva lectura, un instrumento de trabajo y un libro de consultaútil para los comparistas, investigadores, docentes y estudiantes universitarios.”-Louis Imperiale, Quaderni Ibero-Americani.
If a traveler comes to Florence (p. 4)

But most works in literature are fictional narratives. Combined with poetry and drama, they are the backbone of all writings of an imaginary character which possess permanent value. Seine Lagerlof`s classic,"The Wonderful Adventures of Nils", the story of a little boy who flies on gooseback over Sweden at a time when aviation was still experimental, captivated people all over the world, and led to her Nobel Prize in 1909.

"The Forsyte Saga", a trilogy by John Galsworthy, became so popular that it was continued in two further trilogies, it won him the Nobel Prize in 1932."The Thibaults", another sensational, multi-volume family chronicle by Roger Martin du Card, was crowned with the Nobel Prize five years later - even before completion! Naguib Hahfouz finished his most celebrated work, the"Cairo Trilogy", in the early 1950s, considered a sort of Egyptian `Forsyte Saga`, the first volume of this trilogy,"Palace Walk", appeared in America, in English translation, only in the winter of 1990, when the two daughters of the author had already traveled to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize in their father`s name.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez had been thinking about"One Hundred Years of Solitude" for more than twenty years when, suddenly, the elusive plot took shape in his mind, the pieces of the story fell into place, he was driving through the mountains of Mexico at the time, to Acapulco, and very likely had not the vaguest idea that he, too, would be invited to Stockholm as a result of it.

Today the titles of novels like"The Magic Mountain","The Silent Don","The Grapes of Wrath","For Whom the Bell Tolls","Doctor Zhivago" and"Lord of the Flies" may be as familiar to readers as the names of theatre plays like"The Blue Bird","Six Characters in Search of an Author","Desire under the Elms","Murder in the Cathedral","Waiting for Godot" and"Kongi`s Harvest", the latter wildly applauded at the first `Festival of Negro Arts` held in Dakar, Senegal - all created by authors who, together with a number of poets, received the Nobel Prize in Literature and attained international renown.

The history of the prizes reads like a compendium of fairy tales. The first German winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was born under Danish sovereignty and owed allegiance to King Frederick VI of Denmark. When the next Danish monarch, King Christian VIII, gave him a purse to travel to Italy and study Latin inscriptions, he unwittingly contributed to the creation of a masterpiece, the monumental"History of Rone".

The first British winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was born in India, far from the island from where Queen Victoria ruled her empire. He produced a body of work, on the Asian subcontinent and in North America - poems, stories, and two magnificent"Jungle Books` - which spread his fame through the English-speaking world even before he reached the age of thirty.
Table of Contents6
Dedication10
Acknowledgements12
If a traveler comes to Florence14
The Nobel Prizes in Literature, 1901-1992, and Related Events40
Profiles of the Nobel Laureates and Selections of Their Works226
Sully-Prudhomme228
Theodor Mommsen231
Bjornstjerne Bjornson234
José Echegaray237
Frédéric Mistral240
Henryk Sienkiewicz243
Giosuè Carducci246
Rudyard Kipling249
Rudolf Eucken252
Selma Lagerlöf255
Paul Heyse258
Maurice Maeterlinck261
Gerhart Hauptmann264
Rabindranath Tagore267
Romain Rolland270
Verner von Heidenstam273
Karl Gjellerup276
Henrik Pontoppidan279
Carl Spitteler282
Knut Hamsun285
Anatole France288
Jacinto Benavente291
W.B. Yeats294
Wladyslaw Reymont297
Bernard Shaw300
Grazia Deledda303
Henri Bergson306
Sigrid Undset309
Thomas Mann312
Sinclair Lewis315
Erik Karlfeldt318
John Galsworthy321
Ivan Bunin324
Luigi Pirandello327
Eugene O'Neill330
Roger Martin du Gard333
Pearl Buck336
Frans Sillanpää339
Johannes Jensen342
Gabriela Mistral345
Hermann Hesse348
André Gide351
T.S. Eliot354
William Faulkner357
Bertrand Russell360
Pär Lagerkvist363
François Mauriac366
Winston Churchill369
Ernest Hemingway372
Halldór Laxness375
Juan Ramón Jiménez378
Albert Camus381
Boris Pasternak384
Salvatore Quasimodo387
Saint-John Perse390
Ivo Andric393
John Steinbeck396
George Seferis399
Jean-Paul Sartre402
Mikhail Sholokhov405
S.Y. Agnon408
Nelly Sachs411
Miguel Angel Asturias414
Yasunari Kawabata417
Samuel Beckett420
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn423
Pablo Neruda426
Heinrich Böll429
Patrick White432
Eyvind Johnson435
Harry Martinson438
Eugenio Montale441
Saul Bellow444
Vicente Aleixandre447
Isaac Bashevis Singer450
Odysseus Elytis453
Czeslaw Milosz456
Elias Canetti459
Gabriel García Márquez462
William Golding465
Jaroslav Seifert468
Claude Simon471
Wole Soyinka474
Joseph Brodsky477
Naguib Mahfouz480
Camilo José Cela483
Octavio Paz486
Nadine Gordimer489
Derek Walcott492
Appendix496
Selected Bibliography533