Skipping, skipping, skipping

I'm now skipping over three Nobel winners because of the "read it already" rule.

Camilo José Cela (1989) is perhaps an answer to those who think the Prize only ever favours lefties, or those who have been persecuted by their own government. Although his novel La Colmena was banned, he otherwise seems to have been - at least - comfortable in Franco's Spain. The wikipedia entry suggests he informed on fellow writers, and he seems in general to have been fairly unpleasant. I've read some of La Colmena and some of his travel writing. He'll continue to be useful as a reminder of how drab isolationism can be.

Naguib Mahfouz (1988) is more worth a look. His novels are anti-drab: sprawling stories of life in Cairo, written in what I presume is an Arabic style of extravagantly flowery description. He seems to have negotiated the pressures of writing in an Egypt undergoing transformation and the challenges of nationalism and fundamentalism quite gracefully but not without personal danger. Of these three writers he's the one I'd recommend. Try Adrift on the Nile, if only because the translator is Frances Liardet. I met her once. She was lovely.

Joseph Brodsky (1987) was a Russian-American poet and essayist. His poems seemed to feature quite regularly in the magazine Encounter, which I used to see in our school library. It was financed by the CIA. Anyway, the poems seemed quite dull, and as they were, it seems, self-translations from the Russian, he qualifies for that exemption too. Also, and I can't stress enough how trivial this point is, how could anyone want to read the poetry of a man who looks like this?

So I can happily go back to 1986 and Wole Soyinka, even though I fear that this is another one who'll suffer from being a playwright.