For the Living and the Dead

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For the Living and the Dead (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)

If he were not Swedish, Tomas Tranströmer would have won the Nobel Prize in Literature by now. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a disproportionate number of Scandinavian writers were awarded the laurel, provoking charges of parochialism. Still, in the years immediately after World War II that trend continued. The decade of the 1960’s—the first in which no Scandinavian writer was chosen—marked a turning point. Only once in the forty years since 1955—in 1974, when two Swedish writers, Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, were cowinners—has the Nobel in Literature...

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See Also:

• Tomas Tranströmer (Poetry)
• Tomas Tranströmer (Cyclopedia of World Authors)