The Nobel Prize Reading List

"It is an extraordinary work of existential crisis, of memory loss, and persistent doppelgangers, either real or imaginary – the life lived, and the life that might have been lived, in the person of the shadowy other." - The Guardian

"An earnest, fearless book, a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism, for our period of absolute commodity fetishism..." - The New York Times

"Gurnah masterfully interweaves Yusuf's story with the larger historical forces transforming the continent, all in a lush, seductive language that revels in its powers of storytelling." – Los Angeles Times

"There are a few living poets whose new poems one always feels eager to read. Louise Gluck ranks at the top of the list. Her writing's emotional and rhetorical intensity are beyond dispute." – The Washington Post

"Portrays the... breakdown of a murderer in ways that recall Camus's The Stranger." - The New York Times

"It is a novel of intuitions as much as ideas, a cacophony of voices and stories seemingly unconnected across time and space, which meander between the profound and the facetious, the mysterious and the ordinary, and whose true register remains one of glorious ambiguity." – The Guardian

"A virtuoso performance... put on with dazzling daring and aplomb." – The New York Review of Books

"Dylan is sweeping out the ashes from the cave of a long career. He is casting a light on the Jungian shadows of popular song, examining both mechanics and metaphysics. Entertaining and profound..." – The Brooklyn Rail

"A collage of oral testimony that turns into the psycho¬biography of a nation not shown on any map: the poisoned territory where live Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians who are forever changed by the catastophe. The book - by this year's Nobelist - leaves radiation burns on the brain." –The Guardian"

"With a sort of benevolent persistence, Modiano sketches a portrait that is as true-to-life as possible, but that must necessarily remain fragmentary." – The Arts Fuse