Acclaimed Israeli author Amos Oz has been named winner of the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize in Prague, Czech Republic. The prize, awarded by the Franz Kafka Society, is given in recognition of an author’s entire body of work and honors those whose “work addresses readers regardless of their origin, nationality, and culture, like the work by Franz Kafka.” Winners receive $10,000.

Born Amos Klausner, he changed his surname to “Oz”—meaning strength in Hebrew—after his mother committed suicide. In 1963, he graduated from Hebrew University after studying philosophy and Hebrew literature.

After publishing articles in his kibbutz’s newsletter and the newspaper Davar, Oz published his first book in 1965, a collection of short stories entitled Where the Jackals Howl. Since then, Oz has published 18 novels and numerous non-fiction articles and essays. His most popular works include the novels The Black Box and My Michael along with his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. He has also published multiple works of non-fiction on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His latest novel, Between Friends, was published in English earlier this year.

The Kafka Prize was first awarded in 2001 and has been awarded annually since. It is seen as an indicator for future Nobel Prize winners: the 2004 and 2005 Kafka Prize laureates, Elfriede Jelinek and Harold Pinter, went on to win the Nobel later those same years. Other past winners of the Kafka Prize include Philip Roth, Haruki Murakami, and John Banville, all of whom are considered perennial candidates for the Nobel.

Oz, whose other awards include the Goethe Prize and the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, has been a possible Nobel Prize contender before, even being the favored candidate back in 2009. Could the Franz Kafka Prize have given Oz the stepping-stone he needs to finally win the Nobel?

To date, only one Israeli has been awarded the Nobel Prize: novelist S.Y. Agnon, who won it in 1966 in a joint award with Jewish German poet and playwright Nelly Sachs. Other notable Jewish Nobel Prize laureates include Saul Bellow, Imre Kertesz, and I.B. Singer. Could Oz, like Jelinek and Pinter, win the award in the same year he won the Kafka Prize? The Nobel Prize in Literature is slated to be announced early in October.

Oz is already expecting an exciting October, though. The Franz Kafka Society released a statement saying Oz has agreed to come to Prague with his wife for a ceremony in October to receive the prize.

Image credit: Blaues Sofa via Flickr

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Of all American literary awards, none come close to matching the Pulitzer Prize for weight and prestige. Winners can expect to receive an astronomical boost in sales, and, aside from William Faulkner, no American has won the Nobel Prize for Literature without first earning a Pulitzer.

This leads many to speculate who the winner will be each year. Notably, one website has created an algorithm to predict who will win, and it successfully predicted Jennifer Egan’s 2011 win for her book, A Visit From the Goon Squad. In the weeks leading up to the award’s announcement Toonari Post will be reviewing several of the more discussed books from last year, and to try to see which book, above all others, deserves the award.

A Hologram for a King by Dave Eggers has been one of the more controversial books this year. It received glowing reviews from critics, but a quick visit to Amazon or Goodreads shows that the public is not too keen on the work. The plot features Alan Clay, an apathetic, divorced businessman, traveling to Saudi Arabia with his company’s hologram technology in order to impress the king and convince him to purchase the equipment. If Clay is successful he will receive more than enough money to pay off his many encroaching debts, but with the king never showing up to meetings, the pressure is building. The plot has been compared to Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka, but without a single hint at anything fantastic, it is much more grounded in reality than the works of those authors.

The book has a high rank on pprize.com’s list due to several appearances in ‘best-of’ lists and a nomination for the National Book Award, but it seems doubtful it will win the author the Pulitzer. An examination of a failing businessman in Saudi Arabia juxtaposed with American businesses failing to compete with Chinese companies is interesting enough, but in the end, the whole narrative is forgettable. None of the characters are particularly memorable or well fleshed-out. The plot ends on an uncertain note, and, given Clay’s unfortunate predicament, this does not make a satisfying conclusion. In a year with so many strong books, it is unlikely this will be the one that wins the prize.

Kevin Powers’ debut novel, The Yellow Birds, has garnered similar praise from critics, although the pubic has been much kinder to it. Focused on the Iraq war, it tells the story of Pvt. Bartle and his friend, Murph, through chapters that alternate between the war and its aftermath. It is also very clichéd, but in this case that is not necessarily a bad thing. What sets Powers’ novel apart from the others is its language. Powers is a poet first and a novelist second, and it shows here, hinting at the language of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Occasionally, the wording gets out of hand, but, other than a few instances, is still pleasant enough to read.

The characters, while likable, never really develop. For example, all we learn about Murph is that he has a caring mother and a girl back home. The big reveal at the end is also anticlimactic. The book is not without its faults, but it has a definite shot at the Pulitzer Prize.

Stay tuned at Toonari Post for more Pulitzer Prize news and predictions in the days leading up to April 15.

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Well-known contemporary Japanese author and likely Nobel Prize candidate Haruki Murakami, will release a new book this April, according to his publisher. It will be his first book in three years since his mammoth 1Q84, which was originally released as a trilogy in Japan.

Details are scarce about the plot, but considering Murakami reuses the same themes in all his books, (to the point where the New York Times Book Review put together a “Haruki Murakami Bingo”) basic plot points can be pieced together. The main character will most likely be middle aged, enjoy drinking beer, feel alienated and lonely, and have an interest in old records. Cats will also make an appearance, as will teenage girls. Despite recycling similar themes and plots, Murakami has a large fanbase–1Q84 sold millions of copies worldwide.

It has been suggested that Murakami’s new work could be an expansion of the 1Q84 series. Murakami has said, “A fourth volume featuring an older ‘Tengo’ may come out…who knows.” Tengo starred as the male lead in the book. “What I can say now is there are stories before (volume 1) and after (volume 3).”

It is unclear if Murakami aims to write a new book or simply a few short stories, something he has done before. The title story in his collection Blind Woman, Sleeping Willow focuses on the protagonist of his novel, Norwegian Wood, several years after the events of that book.

It is highly likely that this upcoming book will be much shorter than 1Q84, given that the trilogy took him five years to pen.

Murakami’s varied influences may help explain his popularity with western readers compared to other Japanese authors. He spends his time reading writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Philip K. Dick, and Truman Capote, and also translated their works into Japanese. Most recently, during the composition of this current work, he translated Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. 

Although no translation has been commissioned yet, Murakami’s popularity makes it almost certain that one will appear eventually. However, fans who cannot read Japanese will probably have to wait two or three years to read it, the average time it takes translators to bring his works into English. In the meantime, bored readers can read through Murakami’s long list of other books: ten novels, three short story collections, two non-fiction works, and two out-of-print novellas (the first two stories he ever wrote). His most well-known works include Norwegian Wood, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Image Courtesy : Haruki Murakami

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Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico’s most famous novelists, died on Tuesday, May 15, at the age of 83. Reporters were told that Fuentes had suffered an internal hemorrhage.

Fame came easy to Fuentes. Even his first novel, ‘Where the Air is Clear’, which was published when he was 30, garnered much critical acclaim in his home country. As a social commentary that critiqued his homeland and also explored the mind and its workings, it set the tone for the rest of his works.

Fuentes was also a part of the Latin American Boom literary movement in the 1960s and 1970s, along with other acclaimed writers, such as Julio Cortázar, Gabriel Garcia Marqeuz, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jorge Lius Borges. Writers involved often wrote works that owed a lot to modernism, a another movement after World War 1 that turned away from realism and sought to represent reality through other means. Works from this period are often categorized as examples of magical realism or historical fiction, and usually toyed with themes such as time and incorporated political elements.  The movement brought worldwide recognition to the writers and solidified their reputations abroad. 

Fuentes’s fame took off in the United States later, however, with his 1985 novel ‘The Old Gringo’. The book followed the complex story of American writer, Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared in the Mexican Revolution. The book became a bestseller in the States, a first for a Mexican writer, and was adapted into a 1989 film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda.

Fuentes authored over 20 other books, several collections of short stories, and one opera. His oeuvre includes acclaimed novels like ‘The Death of Artemio Cruz’, ‘The Crystal Frontier’, and ‘Christopher Unborn’. His work has been translated into two dozen languages.

At the time of his death, Fuentes had amassed a large collection of prizes, including the Cervantes award, Spain’s most sought after literary award, and the Belisario Domingues Medal of Honor, Mexico’s highest honor. He was considered a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but never won.  A former friend of Fuentes, Octavio Paz, is the only Mexican who has been awarded the honor, having won in 1988.

Although Fuentes’s fiction typically was filled with social and political commentary, he himself never belonged to any political parties. He believed literature was the vehicle through which he could most effectively have his voice heard.  He lambasted the George W. Bush administration and criticized his own country’s government. He also derided Venezuela’s leftist leader, Hugo Chavez, comparing him to Mussolini.

Fuentes is survived by his wife, journalist and television presenter Silvia Lemus, and a daughter, Cecilia, from a previous marriage with actress Rita Macedo, who died in 1993. He also fathered two other children with Lemus, both of whom died before him.

Image Courtesy of   A. Bouirabdane

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