Giants in their Field: An Introduction to the Nobel Prizes in Literature

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.