Louise Glück becomes first American woman to win Nobel prize for literature in 27 years

Louise Glück has been awarded the highest honours by the Swedish Academy of Nobel Prize this year. Louise Glück has become the first American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature in 27 years. She is the 16th woman to ever receive this honour. The win comes after 27 years since Toni Morrison took the award for literature in 1993.

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Nobel prize in literature 2020

The 77-year-old writer and poet is a recipient of many awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and more. Her work is mostly about revisiting the great Greek and Roman myths about family, kids and childhood. Her work is often riddled with nostalgia and gives a fitting backdrop of her roots. The Nobel prize in literature 2020 for Louise Glück’s work honours her pacing words, empathic language and biting experiences of the past.

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A sample of Louise Glück's poems as mentioned in the Nobel Prize 2020 winner website-

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring –

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

The website further describes the Nobel Prize 2020 winner as, “Louise Glück has published twelve collections of poetry and some volumes of essays on poetry. All are characterized by a striving for clarity. Childhood and family life, the close relationship with parents and siblings, is a thematic that has remained central with her. In her poems, the self listens for what is left of its dreams and delusions, and nobody can be harder than she in confronting the illusions of the self. But even if Glück would never deny the significance of the autobiographical background, she is not to be regarded as a confessional poet. Glück seeks the universal, and in this she takes inspiration from myths and classical motifs, present in most of her works.”

Some of Nobel Prize 2020 winner Louise Glück's works-

• Firstborn. – New York : New American Library, 1968
• The House on Marshland. – New York : Ecco Press, 1975
• The Garden. – New York : Antaeus Editions, 1976
• Descending Figure. – New York : Ecco Press, 1980
• The Triumph of Achilles. – New York : Ecco Press, 1985

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Promo Image Credits: Nobel Prize.Org website