Nobel Prize for Literature

Even though the Israeli author Amos Oz was the #1 favourite, it is Romanian-born German author Herta Müller who wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Says the Guardian article: "According to the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, Müller's "moral momentum" means she fits the criteria for the award "perfectly".

"On one hand she's an excellent author with truly fantastic language," he said, "and on the other she has the capacity of really giving you a sense of what it's like to live in a dictatorship, also what it's like to be part of a minority in another country and what it's like to be an exile."

I guess Amos Oz's oeuvre did not quite live up to these important and necessary literary criteria.

Ah, well. I guess Israelis will have to do with just one measly Nobel Prize this year. What a bummer.

Maybe next year, after perhaps the Swedes will get Israel to apologize for the anti-semitic newspaper article in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet.