{UAH} Publishers lose out on literature Nobel bonanza - News - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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Publishers lose out on literature Nobel bonanza - News
Ngugi wa Thiong'o with his novel, Wizard of the Crow, during its launch in Nairobi. The Kenyan novelist has lost out on this year's Nobel Prize for Literature to Patrick Modiano, despite being the odds-on favourite to win it. PHOTO | ANTONY NJUGUNA | REUTERS
Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiongo has lost out on this year's Nobel Prize for Literature to Patrick Mondiano, despite being the odds-on favourite to win it.
The French writer also takes home the Swedish kronor 8 million cash prize (about Sh98 million) that comes with it.
Mondiano is largely unknown outside France, with Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy that hands out the prestigious Nobel prizes, saying he writes children's books, movie scripts and novels. His themes are memory, identity and time and his best known work, Missing Person, is about a detective who has lost his memory.
Victory for Ngugi would have led to a surge of interest in the 76-year-old Kenyan writer's books, likely benefiting various publishers including locally-owned East African Educational Publishers (formerly Heinemann Kenya).
Last year's winner, Canadian Alice Munro, saw sales of her books increase by anywhere between 369 per cent (in Australia) to more than 4,000 per cent in her home country in the week of the award. South Africa's Doris Lessing, who won in 2007, saw sales in Canada alone jump between 670 and 1,780 per cent.
Sales can be subdued, a 2013 study by BookNet Canada and Nielsen Books showed, if retailers are caught without enough copies in stock.
EAEP has Ngugi's The River Between, Petals of Blood and Weep not Child in print, among other titles. We could not ascertain whether the Henry Chakava-led firm pre-ordered any reprints in connection with Ngugi's Nobel buzz.
Ngugi's most recent novel, 2006's Wizard of the Crow (his first in two decades), was published by American publishing firm Random House.
Mondiano joins a pantheon of writers that includes Wole Soyinka, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda, Winston Churchill, Rabindranath Tagore and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Only six African writers had won the literary prize before.
The award was announced in Stockholm, Sweden, at 12:00 GMT Thursday. The Swedish Academy had received 210 valid nominations for the literature prize, 36 of them first-time nominees.
The award goes to "the person who… produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."
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