2013 Literary Awards

English: Image of American Writer Adam Johnson. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The year’s book award winners are a great place to find books to read and discover new authors. Check out the links and try some samples on your ereader.

Nobel Prize in Literature

The highest recognition an author can receive is the Nobel Prize in Literature. The award is given to writers for their body of work. Some notable past winners are: Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro “master of the contemporary short story”.

The award is open to writers from around the world. This year, Alice Munro, a Canadian prose writer was awarded the prize.

Dear Life: Stories (Vintage International)

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories (Vintage International)

The Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction  is “awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.” There are also many other awards ranging from journalist to nonfiction. The Award was founded in 1918. Some previous winners are Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway.

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction goes to Adam Johnson for The Orphan Master's Son

The National Book Award

The National Book Award’s mission is to “celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.” This book has a long and varied past and is one of the major awards given to American writers. This is another great place to find books to read and they do a lot of outreach to communities and in supporting public appearances by writers. Faulkner, Pynchon, Updike, McCarthy, and Franzen are some of the past nominees and winners.

The 2013 National Book Award for Fiction goes to James McBride for The Good Lord Bird.

The Man-Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe, according to Wikipedia. This is a very big deal. This is the biggest of the English Language awards given. They have a long list which they announce very early on and then a short list is selected out of that.

This is a major award to follow because it includes many countries that speak English and covers a diverse range of topics. I discovered a couple of my favorite writers while reading these novels, Julian Barnes and J.M. Coetzee.

The 2013 Man-Booker Prize for fiction winner is Eleanor Catton with The Luminaries. She is the youngest winner in the prize’s history at 27.

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• The 2014 Nobel Prizes at a glance

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness - Free
1899

Joseph Conrad left Poland at sixteen to enlist as a sailor in order to see the world. This is evident in his writings as many of his stories have to do with sailing. He did not become fluent in English until his mid twenties and his writing style has a foreign sensibility. He was able to incorporate a tragic feelings into his English prose that had not been seen before. He is now widely considered one of the best English language writers.

Heart of Darkness is number 67 in the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels. It is a novella originally published in three parts in Blackwood’s Magazine.

Marlow is the main character sent by the company to restore the company’s name by bringing back Kurtz. Marlow narrates most of the story. Kurtz has been down river in Africa trading for Ivory and he is giving the company a bad name. Marlow is appointed boat captain and goes down river to see what is happening. Conrad uses symbolism in the book to show man’s descent into savagery. As Marlow goes farther down river and time passes and gets darker he is getting closer to madness, closer to Kurtz.

The language in this book can be difficult at times. It has been called dense. But the language is not the only difficulty with this book. The themes and approach to imperialism have been points of discussion among literary scholars. Conrad at times is critical of imperialism.

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”

Yet, the book has been criticized for being a justification of imperialism. Chinua Achebe has written brilliant criticism of Heart of Darkness and even advocates that people not read this book. His novel Things Fall Apart is writing back to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s critique of imperialism has been challenged because the book can be seen as a justification for imperialism because it is can be read more as a warning. Conrad never gives voice to the africans in the book. He is warning against the shaming of europeans tactics and

“They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now,--nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.”

While he seems to be sympathetic to their plight, he still only writes about the european’s plight. Conrad was writing in a very different time when just writing about imperialisms imperfection was a form of criticism. Conrad wrote a terrific novel that was years ahead of its time. It is considered to be a precursor to modern literature. Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart can be read as authors in conversation. They are often studied together in Modern Literature courses.

Francis Ford Coppola made a great movie adaptation of Heart of Darkness in 1979 called Apocalypse Now. It places the story in Vietnam and has Kurtz as a rogue Army Colonel.

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