The Nobel Prize in Literature and the Search for Another Nigerian Laureate
By Ifeoma Esiri
The 2022 Nobels have come and gone. Annie Ernaux, the eighty-two-year-old French author, won the literature prize. Her win brought the number of literature laureates from France to sixteen, the highest from any country. From the first Nobel prizes awarded in 1901 to those given in 2022, only six Africans - Wole Soyinka, in 1986 , Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt, 1988), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 1991), John Coetzee (South Africa, 2003), Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe, 2007) and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania, 2021) - have been recipients of the prize.
Wole Soyinka, in 1986 , became the first African to win the world’s most sort after literary prize; thirty-six years later, he remains the only Nigerian Nobel laureate. Chinua Achebe missed the prize during his lifetime, and although there were calls for a posthumous award to be given to him when he died in 2013, Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously. Ben Okri and Chimamanda Adichie are Nigerian writers with the best shot at becoming laureates, but we are thinking about the future and not looking at the present. We seek those to bring up, motivate and encourage, and we seek them here in Nigeria, not in the diaspora.
Zaccheus Onumba Dibiaezue Memorial Libraries (ZODML) has created reading initiatives for generation alpha; the enthusiasm with which this group of youngsters has taken to reading when presented with books they like is impressive. Research has found that reading has a powerful impact on writing development. Children who read have a better understanding of what good writing is, which fosters a feeling that they are capable of writing well and being successful as writers. The laureates we seek will come to be.
To help our potential laureates along, we shall consider what it will take to become one. The first thing is to understand what is required of you as a writer. Alfred Nobel’s Will states that the winner of the prize in literature should be a ‘person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.’ The best way to get a sense of what this means is to read the books written by past winners. If you research the life of those winners, you will find authors and books that influenced their writing, and you might want to read those as well. With 119 laureates in literature as of 2022, there is plenty to choose from.
The next thing to do is to start to write. This is one area in which practice does make for perfection. The temptation to find excuses to put off writing is great, but if you are to be a writer, then you must write. No matter how busy you are, you must find time to write. Toni Morrison, the 1993 literature laureate, wrote at four in the morning because, as a working mother, that was when she could find the time. If getting up early in the morning is difficult for you, then be like John Scalzi, the 2013 Hugo award winner, and write at weekends.
Wole Soyinka
Soyinka was awarded the prize in literature because ‘in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones’ he ‘fashions the drama of existence.’ Almost all of his books, from his debut novel The Interpreters to his most recent Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth, are available from ZODML’s library at 196 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi.
