They won’t often create publishing history like JK Rowling did. You won’t be rushing to pick up their work from the bookstores— most create a publishing spree once they’ve won the Nobel— and there won’t be any massive franchisees around their work either. And at times they seem condemned to be read by literature students only. But they don’t just write your ordinary fiction. They define literature in a way that few others can come close to doing. Nobel Prize winners in literature are not an easy read to recommend and worse still you can’t define their work in a paragraph or two. But they all have one emphatic similarity, that of fearlessness and courage. Thus to come up with a must read list is a difficult task for one runs the risk of violent abuse from the readers. I’ll either be accused of being too snooty or told that I’ve clearly not read enough. I’ll make my peace with either. But nevertheless a list is essential. And no, I’m not a big poetry freak so I’ve never discovered this year’s winner Tomas Tranströmer. So here it is a list of authors, all Nobel prize winners, whose work I would recommend to all. A caveat though, the list is based purely on works I’ve read. I’m sticking to writers known largely for their prose. The first author for me has to be Albert Camus who won the Nobel in 1957. Be it The Plague, The Outsider, The Fall or The Myth of Sisyphus, for me, he remains right on top because no other writer brings forth a critique of the human condition and society at large in a manner that Camus does. Fiction can’t distance itself from reality and Camus’ fiction does just that. [caption id=“attachment_102482” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel in . Getty Images.”] [/caption] The Outsider remains an iconic text, that you can get back to at any given time because the questions he’s raising are always going to be valid. The condemnation of a man because he did not cry at his mother’s funeral is also fundamentally a larger question of how absurd and arbitrary we are as society, a civilized modern society nonetheless. The joy of Camus lies in the fact that he appeals to the rebellious youth who are always driven by existential angst. But then his work is not just your usual existential crisis, nearly everyone can write on those, he’s painting a picture that you won’t like to see. Must reads are The Outsider, The Plague and The Fall though my personal favourite is The Plague. The second author whose work I’ve loved because his style is so very vivid is Orhan Pamuk who won the Nobel in 2006. My Name is Red is just fascinating because of the amount of rich context the book has. Any work that deals with history has my approval and in this particular book, the blend of history and fiction is enough to leave me wanting for more. It’s a book I can read over and over again simply because as a reader there is so much scope for imagination. Snow or Kar in Turkish, is another work that is a must for it is set in Twentieth Century Turkey and deals with the tensions caused between secularism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey. [fpgallery id=266] Imagine writing about transcendence. Imagine reading a book on the subject and actually enjoying it. Well for that you have Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. The book is set in India, roughly around the time of 6th or 7th century BC, nearly the same time as Gautam Buddha. It deals with the experiences of a brahmin boy, by the name Siddhartha — incidentally this was the Buddha’s name before he left his royal home— who leaves home to become and ascetic, then gives up the ascetic life to become a trader, takes a lover, has a son and finally goes back to asceticism. The work centres around larger existential questions that surround us due to our inherent consciousness and while it sounds like a dull read, the plot by itself will ensure that you finish this one. Hesse won the Nobel Prize in 1946. Siddhartha was published in 1922. Continued on the next page If any author has defined the South American continent it has to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez. From One Hundred years of solitude to Chronicle of a death foretold to his short stories, these are works that blend fantasy and reality in exquisite detail. One Hundred years of solitude would be the first book I would recommend for the tale of the Buendía family is a story that will make you fall in love with Marquez’s writing. Be prepared to have your idea of fantasy questioned. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is another must read. The other significant South American writer on the list is Mario Vargas Llosa who won the Nobel prize in 2010. Incidentally he and Marquez are no longer on buddy terms. A contemporary author, his work is largely in Spanish but English translations are easily available in India. Llosa’s War of the Ends of the Worlds, which is inspired by real events in Brazil, is a fantastic tale of revolutions, ideas, communities and individuals. Again the historical context of revolutions and religion as described by Llosa makes for a rich narrative. Feast of the Goat is the second book I would recommend since the work is so antithetical to Marquez’s magical realism. Llosa is hard-hitting and not afraid to spell our reality in his fiction. The last author on the list for me is John Steinbeck with his epic Grapes of Wrath. He won the Nobel in 1962. His novel set in the times of Depression is not meant to leave you happy or feeling great as he says so in the back of the cover. Its a novel that is relevant to America today more than ever and its not a bad time to discover this modern classic. You can almost draw the parallels to the global situation today. This list also deserves some other names and I can’t end without mentioning them. Jean Paul Sartre who declined the Nobel in 1964 because he refused to accept the writer as an institution. Ernest Hemingway with his The Old man and the sea which is a poignant read and a must for all. Rudyard Kipling, even though as post-colonial subjects we feel the need to critique his work rigorously since he’s carrying the White Man’s burden in his writing. Boris Pasternak, who wrote the classic Dr Zhivago but could not accept the award because of Soviet state pressure. Last even though I said I would not mention them, I can’t help but do so because it would be very, very wrong of me, poems by Pablo Neruda and TS Eliot should also be added to your list. But like all lists this is very subjective. But then the joy of literature lies in discovering and the path to good reads can’t always be decided by awards or a list.
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