Nobel Prize

Interview with Naguib Mahfouz by writer and journalist Mohamed Salmawy in March, 2006. Mohamed Salmawy: What did you feel when you knew you had won the Nobel Prize for Literature? Naguib Mahfouz: I felt extreme happiness as well as great astonishment. I never expected to win the prize. During my time Nobel was awarded to…

Works Plays A Dance of the Forests. – London : Oxford Univ. Press, 1963 The Lion and the Jewel. – London : Oxford Univ. Press, 1963 Three Plays. – Evanston, IL, 1962. – Content: The Trials of Brother Jero ; The Strong Breed ; The Swamp Dwellers Five Plays. – London : Oxford Univ Press,…

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Excerpt from Aké. The Years of Childhood (Pages 25-28) Mr Olagbaju’s bachelor house behind the school became a second lunch-hour home. His favourite food appeared to be the pounded yam, iyan, at which I soon became his keen accomplice. Through the same iyan, I made my first close school friend, Osiki, simply by discovering that…

Wole Soyinka’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1986 Your Majesties, Ladies and Gentlemen, It was inevitable that the Nordic world and the African, especially that part of it which constitutes the Yoruba world – should meet at the crossroads of Sweden. That I am the agent of such a symbolic encounter is due…

Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1986 This Past Must Address Its Present A rather curious scene, unscripted, once took place in the wings of a London theatre at the same time as the scheduled performance was being presented on the actual stage, before an audience. What happened was this: an actor refused to come on stage…

8 December 1978 The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue…

English Nobel Lecture on 2 May, 1973 (Translation) An Essay on the Reason of Poetry It is said by those who ought to know – and by others, who also ought to know, it is disputed – that in matters which to all appearances are rational, calculable and achieved by the combined efforts of architects,…

English Excerpt from The Clown I It was dark by the time I reached Bonn, and I forced myself not to succumb to the series of mechanical actions which had taken hold of me in five years of traveling back and forth: down the station steps, up the station steps, put down my suitcase, take…

Heinrich Böll’s speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1972 (in German) Herr Ministerpräsident, meine Damen und Herren, anlässlich eines Besuchs in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland hat Seine Majestät der König von Schweden einen gelehrten Blick in die Schichten der Vergänglichkeit getan, aus der wir kommen und auf der wir wohnen. Vielleicht hat der…