The expert compared the Nobel Prize in Literature to a lottery

In 2023, the Swedish Academy may award a screenwriter or lyricist for computer games

Already this Thursday, October 5, the name of the 2023 Nobel Prize winner in literature will be announced in Stockholm. There are no long or short lists for the award, and there are also no lists of candidates or nominated authors, so any prediction is guesswork. The lists compiled by bookmakers look solid, but again they are pulled out of thin air. It’s impossible to guess the winner, so what makes sense to do? Trying to penetrate the “train of thought” of the members of the Swedish Committee, which is what the MK correspondent tried to do together with the literary critic and columnist Maxim Mamlyga. Here’s what our interlocutor said:

— The Nobel Prize, especially in recent years, is in a sense a lottery. Many are trying to “get into the heads” of the members of the Nobel Committee and predict the laureate. But, as we know, only many years later, when the archives are opened, will we find out how everything really was. I really like Galina Yuzefovich’s theory that in recent years the prize, through its selection, increasingly speaks of changing the boundaries of literature.

— Are you talking about awarding the prize to the conventional “songwriter” Bob Dylan?

— Yes, about Dylan and the lyrics of his songs, about Svetlana Alexievich with a choir of voices (Granin and Adamovich worked in the same way) and so on. So I wouldn’t be surprised if, for example, the screenwriter of a TV series or the author of texts for games, the author of young adult literature, an art critic or an essayist received the award this year. Literature has changed a lot – and this must be recorded. However, the choice from a fairly standard set of candidates from discussions in recent years is also quite likely – I am ready to present in this place (the 2023 laureate – I.V.) and Salman Rushdie, and Peter Hoeg, and JK Rowling, and Anne Carson, and Antonio Molina, and Thomas Pynchon.

— Should we expect a Nobel medal in Russia this year?

— This traditional question does not seem relevant now. It is much more likely that the prize could go to a Ukrainian writer – Sergei Zhadan, Yuri Andrukhovich, Oksana Zabuzhko. (Experts also name Russian-language prose writer from Ukraine Andrei Kurkov among the favorites. — I.V.) However, it is possible that the Nobel Committee may award the prize to a Russian-speaking author, as both recognition of merit and a political gesture – as was already the case with the Peace Prize. In this case, we can remember Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Maria Stepanova and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya.