Vijaydan Detha, Satchidanandan Among Nobel Prize Aspirants

Seasoned Malayalam poet K Satchidanandan, who has been writing for over 40 years, says there is a wealth of writing in Indian languages that has not yet been discovered outside the country due to which it loses out on big literary prizes such as the Nobel.

Satchidanandan along with Vijaydan Detha, a octogenarian Hindi short story writer hailing from Rajasthan figure among probables for this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, that is likely to be announced on Thursday, October 6.

British online site Ladbrokes has tipped Detha and Satchidanandan along with Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, Australia's Les Murray, Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Somalia's Nuruddin Farah, Hungary's Peter Nadas, Korean poet Ko Un and China's Bei Dao as probable contestants shortlisted by the highly secretive Prize.

"I think writers in India are versatile in the languages and consider some of them even better that many writers around the world and I would not think of it as strange if an Indian does bag the Nobel," Satchidanandan told PTI from Kochi where he is currently attending a Sahitya Akademi poetry workshop.


From: http://ping.fm/OLvsv