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The announcement of the winner of the Nobel prize in literature usually prompts one of three reactions. The first is “Who?”; the second is “Why?”; the third—by far the rarest—is “Hurrah!” This year, reactions were firmly in the first two camps. On October 5th Jon Fosse, a Norwegian, was awarded the world’s most prestigious writing prize. Many literary buffs had never heard of him. Mr Fosse writes mainly in Nynorsk, a form of Norwegian which is, even among the country’s writers, a minority pursuit. His best-known (but still little-known) work is a trilogy called “Septology”, which touts itself as a “radically other reading experience”.
In some ways awarding this prize is a simple process. As is customary, Mr Fosse was telephoned to hear a Scandinavian voice telling him he had won the coveted prize, which comes with SKr11m (around $1m). Like many Nobel winners, he may then have opened the champagne. Or perhaps, as Doris Lessing did, he may have sighed and said: “Oh, Christ.”
In almost every other way the prize is a nightmare of complexity. Judging anything, even a 100-metre race, can be hard. Judging literature—a symphony, not a sprint—is much harder. Whatever the literary prize, from the Nobel (awarded for an author’s oeuvre) to the Booker (for their most recent book), there will be those who critique the judges’ decisions. Particularly when they do not win. “Posh bingo” is how Julian Barnes, an author, once described the Booker prize (which he won only on his fourth...