A big name or a leap into the unknown and discovery? Questioned, criticized and sometimes sulphurous, the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded Thursday, could still surprise. Since the award’s inception, a total of 16 women have been awarded the prestigious literary prize, the first being Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf in 1909.
Russian Ludmila Oulitskaïa, often quoted, would also carry the message of an anti-Putin prize after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It would cause a reaction”, according to Björn Wiman, head of the cultural department of the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, who underlines both the author’s opposition to the Kremlin and the fact of highlighting Russian culture in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
“It is this kind of complex intellectual debate that we are happy to see around the Nobel,” he notes.