{"id":1128,"date":"2019-10-11T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T23:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2019-10-11T00:01:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T23:01:05","slug":"the-nobel-prize-in-literature-be-more-olga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/10\/11\/the-nobel-prize-in-literature-be-more-olga\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nobel Prize in Literature: Be More Olga"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Olga Tokarczuk was announced as the winner of the (delayed) 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature<\/a>. I’m not going to linger on the reasons for awarding the 2018 and 2019 prizes together \u2013 or about why I\u2019m only focusing on Tokarczuk and not the 2019 winner \u2013 you probably already know them. There are also issues surrounding diversity, with many people criticising the 2018 and 2019 awards for being euro-centric and white (despite Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Prize in Literature committee, saying in the week before the announcemen<\/a>t that \u201cWe had a more Eurocentric perspective on literature and now we are looking all over the world\u201d \u2013 as if looking is enough, a gesture towards inclusivity before falling back into old habits). These criticisms are valid points, and it\u2019s important to make them: we can’t champion women in translation without considering how other forms of bias intersect with gender bias. I can\u2019t pretend I wouldn\u2019t have liked the 2019 winner<\/a> to have been\u2026 different (in so many ways). And I\u2019ll come back to Olsson later, because he had some pretty inflammatory things to say about women too…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Regular readers will already know my admiration for Tokarczuk\u2019s work \u2013 for the incandescent, challenging Flights<\/em><\/a> (translated by Jennifer Croft) and for the gloriously fatalistic Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead<\/em><\/a> (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and also longlisted this week for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation<\/a>). These were both published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, who form part of a wave of brave, outward-looking independent publishers resisting narratives of nationalism and isolationism, and who we need in these insular times. But though Tokarczuk may have exploded on the Anglophone literary scene with Man Booker International-winning Flights<\/em> a couple of years ago, this was not an overnight success story. Rather, it was the result of years of work: Croft had been trying to get her translation of Flights <\/em>published for ten years<\/a>, and Lloyd-Jones, who translated Tokarczuk\u2019s House of Day and House of Night<\/em> back in 2002 (published by Granta Books), has championed Tokarczuk\u2019s work (and Polish literature) tirelessly for years.<\/p>\n

So yesterday\u2019s win didn\u2019t come out of nowhere. Tokarczuk has been widely read in Poland and in other European countries for decades. We’re the ones who are late to the party: it took fifteen years between the publication of Lloyd-Jones\u2019s translation of House of Day and House of Night <\/em>and Croft\u2019s translation of Flights<\/em>, which coincided with Poland being the guest of honour at London Book Fair, and the first time that Tokarczuk was tipped to win the Nobel prize. Then there was the Man Booker International win in 2018, and Fitzcarraldo\u2019s nurturing of Tokarczuk\u2019s \u0153uvre (as well as the 2018 publication of Drive Your Plow<\/em>, they will publish Croft\u2019s translation of The Books of Jacob <\/em>in 2021). I\u2019m not suggesting that Tokarczuk won the prize because she was translated into English; that would reinforce the Anglophone dominance of the Nobel. But I do think that, for those of us celebrating the award in the English-speaking world, congratulations should also be extended to her brilliant translators, who have made her accessible to so many people who otherwise would not have been able to read her.<\/p>\n

So there is much to celebrate. But there is also much still to do. Back in May, I was interviewed by a journalist who, when I mentioned some of the factors above, insisted that \u201cOlga would have been published in English anyway\u201d because she is a brilliant writer. I agree that she\u2019s a brilliant writer \u2013 erudite, quick-witted, philosophical, and shrewd \u2013 but that isn’t the only reason her work is available for me to read. Indeed, attributing everything to a writer\u2019s innate \u201cbrilliance\u201d plays into the myth of meritocracy that so often excludes women and other marginalised groups from the top table. Chair of the Nobel Prize in Literature committee Anders Olsson also said in the lead-up to the announcement<\/a> that \u201cPreviously it was much more male-oriented. Now we have so many female writers who are really great, so we hope the prize and the whole process of the prize has been intensified and is much broader in its scope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wait, what? Now <\/em>we have so many female writers who are really great? Ah, so THAT\u2019s why only 14 of the previous 114 laureates were women. There just weren\u2019t many women writers. Or not many great ones.<\/p>\n

No. No. No.<\/p>\n

They were there, they just weren\u2019t seen. They were great, they just weren\u2019t recognised. If we blindly and glibly accept that the gender disparity is about quality and not about visibility, then we are complicit in a system that privileges white Eurocentric masculinity. I\u2019m delighted that Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 prize, not just because of her brilliance, but also because of the way she resists borders, embraces diversity, and, in the words of the Nobel committee themselves<\/a>, \u201crepresents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.\u201d Note to the academy: Be More Olga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Olga Tokarczuk was announced as the winner of the (delayed) 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. I’m not going to linger on the reasons for awarding the 2018 and 2019 prizes together \u2013 or about why I\u2019m only focusing on Tokarczuk and not the 2019 winner \u2013 you probably already know them. There are also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[679],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Nobel Prize in Literature: Be More Olga - Translating Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/10\/11\/the-nobel-prize-in-literature-be-more-olga\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Nobel Prize in Literature: Be More Olga - Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday Olga Tokarczuk was announced as the winner of the (delayed) 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. 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