Home » Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2016

Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2016

The times they are a-changing! American musician Bob Dylan has become the first songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In announcing his win, the Swedish academy said it was for having “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. The singer is the first American to win since 1993 when Toni Morrison won […]

By SAPeople
14-10-16 11:50
in Fab South African Stuff

The times they are a-changing! American musician Bob Dylan has become the first songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In announcing his win, the Swedish academy said it was for having “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

The singer is the first American to win since 1993 when Toni Morrison won for ‘Beloved’. South Africa’s John Maxwell “J. M.” Coetzee won the same award in 2003, and Doris Lessing – who grew up in Southern Africa – won in 1997.

Singer-songwriter Dylan, who turned 75 this year, continues to inspire musicians, writers, thinkers and fans around the world over 50 years since he began his career… exerting a cultural influence that’s spanned generations and crossed socio-economic boundaries around the world.

His talent for lyrics has enabled him to take on timeless themes, whether tangled up in love or pulled apart by politics.

The Swedish Academy said Dylan was selected because he is “a great poet in the English speaking tradition”, and that “for 54 years now he’s been at it reinventing himself, constantly creating a new identity.”

In fact Dylan’s career began with a new identity. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Minnesota, he took his stage name from poet Dylan Thomas whose work, he said, influenced him.

The award is usually bestowed upon someone who has produced “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction” in the field of literature, normally reserved for books and poetry. Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o had been favoured to win.

JM Coetzee – who is now an Australian citizen – won in 2003, a year after his move from South Africa to Australia where he now lives in Adelaide. Doris Lessing was also a winner. Scroll down to watch her humorous reaction on hearing the news she had won..

The Nobel Prize for Literature award will be presented, along with the other five Nobel Prizes, on 10 December (which is the anniversary of founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896).

Dylan has not yet commented.

Here’s Doris Lessing’s reaction when she won in 2007: