• Nobel Prize for Literature, here are the "favorites" of 2020

  • Nobel Prize for Literature 2018 to Olga Tokarczuk and for 2019 to Peter Handke

  • The Nobel Prize for Literature will not be awarded this year.

    After the harassment scandal

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08 October 2020The Nobel Prize for Literature went to the American poet Louise Glück, for "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal".

Childhood, family life and relationships with parents and siblings are a theme that remains central to his work.



Born in New York on April 22, 1943, she is an adjunct professor at Yale University.

With his poetry he evokes memorial fragments by reworking themes such as isolation and loneliness, in a tone that is both colloquial and meditative.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 with the collection "The Wild Iris" ("The Wild Iris", 1993), she convinced critics for the controlled and elegant style with which she absorbs long narrative sequences of confessional trait reminiscent of Robert's poetry Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

In the collection "Meadowlands" (1997) he evokes mythical figures such as Ulysses and Penelope in a very modern writing, which tells of a marriage that is about to end.

Among his other collections of poems, "Vita Nova", "The Seven Ages" and "Averno".

He won the Book Review's Bingham Poetry Prize and The New Yorker's Book Award in Poetry.        



The Nobel Prize in the year of the pandemic


This year, the prestigious award from the Royal Swedish Academy has found itself dealing with Covid-19: therefore a restricted audience and live streaming on the Nobelprize.org website.

Even the handover ceremony at the Concert Hall, on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, will not be able to have the usual celebrations and perhaps will be replaced by a television broadcast.

The prize money was instead increased by the Foundation to 10 million crowns, more or less 950 thousand euros. 



Along with that for peace, the Nobel Prize for literature has always been the most followed, surrounded by attention and controversy.

Last year, a double prize was awarded.

The one for 2019 went to the Austrian Peter Handke, arousing strong criticism for his stances in favor of the former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, the one for 2018 was attributed to the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, with a year delay for via the sexual harassment case involving the Swedish Academy, the organization that chooses the winner.