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Syrian poet Adonis frontrunner for Nobel prize
Oct 01: Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, better known as Adonis, is the frontrunner to win this year`s Nobel literature prize, book critics told Reuters on Tuesday.
Oct 01: Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, better known as Adonis, is the frontrunner to win this year's Nobel literature prize, book critics told Reuters on Tuesday.
The winner of the prestigious 10 million Swedish crown ($1.3 million) prize -- which has been awarded since 1901 and managed to incur the wrath of the former Soviet Union, the Vatican and China -- will be announced on Thursday.
So intense is the focus on the prize that the choice is often linked to the power politics of the day, prompting some pundits to say an Arab may win this year to alleviate humiliation and anger caused by the US invasion of Iraq.
"This prize should always be seen in a political context," said Javier Rodriguez Marcos of the Spanish newspaper El Pais's literary supplement Babelia. "One factor could be countries that have been in the news recently, from Arab cultures." Duraid Albik, news editor for the daily Gulf News in Dubai, noted that the prize had gone to the Arab world only once -- to Egypt's Naguib Mahfouz in 1988. "If we can get someone in this area, it will show this is not only an area of violence, that there is also life and culture here," he said, naming Adonis as his favourite. "That would be wonderful," agreed Josyane Savigneau, a literary editor at the French newspaper Le Monde.
Asa Bechman, chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter listed Adonis as a "maybe", saying New Zealand poet Janet Frame was her top candidate.
"Now is the time for a poet," Bechman said, noting novelists had won for the past six years -- the most famous being VS Naipaul in 2001 and Günter Grass in 1999.
Bureau Report
The winner of the prestigious 10 million Swedish crown ($1.3 million) prize -- which has been awarded since 1901 and managed to incur the wrath of the former Soviet Union, the Vatican and China -- will be announced on Thursday.
So intense is the focus on the prize that the choice is often linked to the power politics of the day, prompting some pundits to say an Arab may win this year to alleviate humiliation and anger caused by the US invasion of Iraq.
"This prize should always be seen in a political context," said Javier Rodriguez Marcos of the Spanish newspaper El Pais's literary supplement Babelia. "One factor could be countries that have been in the news recently, from Arab cultures." Duraid Albik, news editor for the daily Gulf News in Dubai, noted that the prize had gone to the Arab world only once -- to Egypt's Naguib Mahfouz in 1988. "If we can get someone in this area, it will show this is not only an area of violence, that there is also life and culture here," he said, naming Adonis as his favourite. "That would be wonderful," agreed Josyane Savigneau, a literary editor at the French newspaper Le Monde.
Asa Bechman, chief literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter listed Adonis as a "maybe", saying New Zealand poet Janet Frame was her top candidate.
"Now is the time for a poet," Bechman said, noting novelists had won for the past six years -- the most famous being VS Naipaul in 2001 and Günter Grass in 1999.
Bureau Report