Feature || 2017 Nobel Prize For Literature: How Fair Was The Swedish Academy To Ngugi Wa Thiongo? By Abubakar Akote || The Arts-Muse Fair
Photo: Google image English writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Buried Giant, Never Let Me Go, and The Remains of the Day , was recently named by the Swedish Academy as the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature. Announcing the winner, the Academy, said of him, “he has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of the world…If you mix Jane Austen and Kafka, you have Kazuo Ishiguro’s work.” Kazuo Ishiguro. Photo: Google image Although this year’s announcement was not greeted with a global shock as last year’s when it was awarded to a songwriter, Bob Dylan, it was no less shocking to many Africans who bandied the speculation that Kenyan writer; Ngugi Wa Thiongo was set to win the Prize this year. Even as there were doubts by some pundits of Ngugi’s chance of winning the prize largely because his writings were seen to be anti-west, it was still being expected that the Prize would be his to pick. Ngugi Wa Thiongo. Photo: Google image The Permanent Secr