Have any of the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature been as good at literary writing as George Orwell

Question

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Answer 1

Steinbeck was. Hemingway wasn't. Sinclair Lewis had his moments, but his average was well below Orwell's average.

Answer 2

Let's not forget some of the great German-language authors who've won Nobel prizes for literature, like Günther Grass and Elfriede Jelenik. They're not as well-known in English because German can be difficult to translate well, but they're both amazing writers.

On the other hand, there are just as many writers who have equal or greater skills who will never win Nobels because the committee can be very conservative. Christa Wolf, a major feminist novelist and the biggest figure on the German literary stage for the last sixty years will most likely never win a Nobel prize (she was nominated the same year as Jelenik) because of her association with the communist party. Most literary critics and "Germanists" would probably agree that Wolf is a far more important writer than Jelenik and has made a bigger contribution to literature, but her politics are too controversial.

Answer 3

Don't get me wrong, Orwell was a great writer.

But Yeats, Eliot and Kipling were also great writers, arguably more brilliant than Orwell - if a tad on the right-wing side - and they were all Nobel laureates who were awarded the prize within Orwell's lifetime. More recently, Faulkner, Camus, Kawabata, Beckett, Garcia Marquez, Mahfouz, Heaney, Fo and Pinter are all undeniably world-class writers who've been honoured with the N-word.

The thing is not that Orwell wasn't good enough to be awarded the Nobel. It's that the Nobel isn't necessarily that much of an honour.

Answer 4

I don't know who won the Nobel Prize for literature, but I know George Orwell was a pretty good writer. I liked Animal Farm and 1984. They each were both political. And for some reason, I thought Animal Farm was a little scary when I read it in school in eighth grade.

Answer 5

I like Orwell, but his most popular writing is "beat you over the head" stuff. Yes, they are more relevant today than ever before. No doubt. I like his essays because they are a bit more subtle.

For literary Nobel Prize winners, I've always preferred Albert Camus and Seamus Heaney.

Answer 6

George Orwell is maximum definately a worth recipiant of a Nobel Prize, regardless of ways little he wrote in words of fiction. regrettably, as he died interior of a three hundred and sixty 5 days of, arguably, his artwork of genius, Nineteen 80-4. notwithstanding, the essays Orwell wrote for the era of his existence are definitetely some thing to be marvelled at, and probably a shame they were no longer acknowledged as such for the period of his existence.

Answer 7

The thing about prizes is that the best people often don't even get nominated. Either the prize panel wants to be ultra trendy in their choice or they want to honour some old writer, no matter how bad their writing might have become.

Answer 8

I enjoyed Mikhail Sholokhov (1965)
Alexander Solzhinetsyn (1970)
Gabriel Garcia Marques (1982)

Answer 9

I think it's who's writing you prefer personally rather than who's the best. In my opinion I prefer Rudyard Kipling as a writer rather than George Orwell. Rudyard Kipling won it in 1907.

Answer 10

Thats a matter of opinion. Personally I think Orwell is the greatest. But he was also fairly modest, so he might not agree...