Ideology And European History Influenced The Literature Noble Prize 2015
The 2015 literature Nobel Price has gone to Svetlana Alexievich,A Belurasian woman writer known for her book War's Unwomanly Face. The book was released in 1985,with the themes having sharp incisions into World War II brutalities as followed by the terror of ideology behind the iron curtains as evidenced in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine of that time.
Alexievich was born in Ukraine in the family of teachers, her father(Belorussian) and mother(Ukrainian) were both teachers. She took to teaching also, only later on to become a journalist specializing in investigative journalism. Her display of talent as brilliant writer came out when she effectively wrote about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. She is a second in two senses, she is second to Alice Munro that won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013, because Patrick Mondiano won in 2014,and also she is second in literary eminence to the late Ukrainian literary guru, Taras Sheveschenko.
Alexievich’s style of writings is known as Narrative realism, an artistic virtue that is clearly evident among very many African women writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi the author of Kintu (read chintu),Noviolet Bulawayo,Okwiri Oduor and Penina Mulama Muhando.The virtue of narrative ability displayed by Alexievich and these African women writers can tempt one to hypothesize that perhaps women are genetically gifted for simplicity and nuanced details in writing. Just like ,the above African women writers Alexievich excellently narrated brutalities of war and masculine ideology in War's Unwomanly Face , her oeuvre that has made her attract the Nobel recognition.
All in all, it has to be observed that European culture has a strong influence on the decisions of the Swedish academy when giving out the literature Nobel Prize. The consecutive past five Nobel Prizes in literature have gone to the writers that deals with themes of European experience, European idelogy, writing in European languages or translated to European languages. Such benchmarks put writers that actively support literature in non-European languages like Ngugi wa Thiong’o at a least favourable position to attract the Nobel prize.
Alexander Khamala Opicho,
Lodwar, Kenya