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Welcome to the Nobel Prize abyss

In the choice of Kazuo Ishiguro, the Swedes once again demonstrate their preference for the bleak and humourless over warm and funny storytelling.

Published Fri, Oct 13, 2017 · 09:50 PM
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I AM off lingonberries for the time being and Volvos and flat white furniture from Ikea. No meatballs, thank you. Once again the humorless Swedes have chosen a writer of migraines for the Nobel Prize in literature, an author of twilight meditations on time and memory and mortality and cold toast by loners looking at bad wallpaper. It's not a prize for literature, it's a prize for nihilism. The Swedes said he's like Jane Austen combined with Kafka with some of Proust, three other writers you'd never invite to a party. Well, at least they didn't give it to Joni Mitchell.

That Swedes give out the Nobel is like the Swiss deciding the Cy Young …

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