2015 2025 Nobel Winners

追加: 2026-05-07

[00:00:01]Hello everyone. Welcome to The Old Man in the Reed. My name is Jerry. Uh well, today I'm going to uh present the last of the Nobel Prizeinning books I've read. Uh this will be from the years 2015 to 2025.

[00:00:24]And uh so the first winner in 2015 was Lana Alexovich. Uh she was born in 1948 uh and was a Bellarusian journalist. But her books are all just uh basically her interviewing uh people in different situations and then she just uh writes down their uh their talk or their answers to her questions and ju just uh their experiences. So the first is uh voices from Chernobyl. Uh, and in this one, Alexia is interviewing survivors from the Chernobyl disaster.

[00:01:13]And, uh, so what she does does is presents their stories. And it's basically um just a true apocapocalyptic uh story uh that uh tells about the destruction of uh a lot of lives.

[00:01:38]Uh the next book is Zincy Boys. Uh these these are interviews of Russian soldiers who had fought in the uh Russian Afghanistan war. Uh and uh the memories of those uh soldiers and the interviews with their family members are pretty much indistinguishable from any uh any interviews that would be conducted with any other uh survivors from any war.

[00:02:14]Uh the next book is the womanly face of war and these are interviews of women uh who uh fought in World War II. Um the many of the women were killed and uh never returned and uh those that did faced a lot of discrimination. They were considered un unwomanly, unladylike and unmarriageable.

[00:02:51]And the last book I have is secondhand time. And these are interviews of Russian citizens uh just uh telling about their experiences uh from the collapse of the USSR.

[00:03:10]Uh then in 2016, the winner was quite a surprise for me and uh I was a little uh questionable about it at first and that was Bob Dylan. Uh and uh he was born in 1941.

[00:03:28]He's an American singer songwriter.

[00:03:32]And uh I really questioned this uh pick when I first heard about it, but I went ahead and bought uh a book. And this is lyrics 19662 to 1985.

[00:03:47]And uh I'll tell you, you know, this really opened my eyes to uh the poetry in the lyrics of the songs he sang. You know, I had been listening to those songs most of my adult life. Uh, and uh, I guess I just didn't pay attention to the lyrics themselves because after I started reading these uh, the poetry, reading them as poetry, uh, I was just uh, flabbergasted and he's become one of my favorite poets.

[00:04:27]Uh the next uh winner is uh one of the writers that I've already done an individual uh video for uh where I discussed his books and that's Kazuo Ishiguro.

[00:04:41]Uh and so I'll show you what I have. Uh the first is the pale view of hills.

[00:04:53]Then uh an artist of the floating world, the remains of the day. My favorite book. Uh really a great book.

[00:05:10]Uh, the unconsoiled when we were orphans.

[00:05:24]Never let me go.

[00:05:30]Nocturns.

[00:05:36]The buried giant. quite different than most of his books.

[00:05:44]Clara and the Sun God or Clara and the Sun.

[00:05:52]And uh I guess that's everything by Ishiguro.

[00:05:57]Uh then in 2018 the winner was Olga Tokazor Torquerzac.

[00:06:10]Well, uh, I'll anyway, she was a Polish, uh, writer and born in 1962, and I don't think I can pronounce her last name. To Cororazac, I will go with, but uh, the winner or the book only book I've won read by her is Drive Your Plow uh, Over the Bones of the Dead. And, uh, this is about an old woman who, uh, lives out in the back woods. And uh she's an avid follower of astrology and she becomes uh involved in unraveling a mystery behind uh some very suspicious deaths.

[00:06:59]Then in 2019 the winner was Peter Hadkkey. He was an Austrian novelist born in 1942.

[00:07:08]And I've only read this one book and I have to admit I did not care for it at all. But this is the goalie's anxiety at the penalty kick. And it's written just in a very minimalist style. And there's very little uh variation in the tone of the book. And it just drones at basically the same uh tone and uh uh same monotone tone I should say and uh that's regardless of what the situation is it you know including murders and fights and u the story itself is told by the protagonist and basically I think the book is told in the persona of the uh protagonist because it's about a murder he committed without any motive and no remorse.

[00:08:16]Uh the next in 2020 is Louise Gluck. Uh she's an American poet born in 1943 and died in 2023.

[00:08:29]and I've only read the one book. It's a Verno. Uh but there's some really excellent poetry in it. Uh some of the poems that uh uh I thought seemed very personal and almost intrusive. It seemed like reading them at times.

[00:08:51]And uh the next winner in 2021 was Abdullah Razak Gerna. And I've just read this one book. Uh he's a Tanzanian uh novelist. He was born in 1948. And I've just read uh Paradise. And this is about a young boy named Yusaf uh who is put into servitude um to a man known as Uncle Aziz by his father to pay off debts that his father had. Uh so the boy uh grows up uh learning the business uh of the uncle uh and uh he uh as a as he when he find grows up he ends up uh accompanying his uncle on a very adventurous and uh u dangerous uh trading mission.

[00:09:56]And I'm gonna have to pause this because I forgot to put the rest of my books out here. So, I'll be right back. Okay, I am back. I got my books. Uh, the next winner in 2022 was Annie Erno. Uh, she was a French writer uh born in 1940.

[00:10:18]And I have uh two books that of hers that I've read. The first is uh getting lost. And this is a is a diary that Erno kept while she was having a sexual affair uh with a married Russian diplomat.

[00:10:39]And in the book's introduction, she explains that this is an unaltered reprint from the original diary. And if so, she wrote to her diaries exquisitly well.

[00:10:57]Uh the next is a woman's story. Uh and this no tells the story of her mother's life and uh she begins with her mother's early life and then her marriage and the struggles that the family went through uh trying to make a living. and she tells about her mother's death and her and her emotional reaction to it and the preparations for the mother's burial.

[00:11:30]Then in 2023, the winner was John FSY born in 1959.

[00:11:37]He was a norwe author and wrote some really strange books. I'll have to say that. Uh the first one is a shining uh and this is about a man who aimlessly drives his car. Uh he when he comes to an intersection he will turn either left or right and then uh when he comes to another intersection then he will turn the opposite direction. And so he just keeps driving around until he finally turns into just a old uh forest road.

[00:12:19]And he continues down that as the road gets worse and worse and eventually gets stuck.

[00:12:25]And then he gets out of the car and starts walking down a forest path as darkness approaches and it starts getting colder. just strange book. But then pretty much everything I've read by him.

[00:12:43]Uh this next one uh is the other name and uh this is it's told in just a continuous stream of consciousness and it's about uh two men who live close to each other. Uh their names are both Asil and uh they are both artists. But the story is narrated by uh one of them who had goes to visit the uh other Asil. Uh but when he gets there, he finds him lying in the snow and he takes him to a hospital.

[00:13:27]And the last uh or third book and last book I have by FSY is Alyss at the fire.

[00:13:34]And this is about an elderly woman named Sign who is remembering her husband uh her husband Azil who had disappeared 20 years before uh when he took his small boat out uh into a fjord during a storm.

[00:13:57]Uh but she's lying on her bench uh and uh she sees herself standing by the window uh waiting looking for uh her for her husband. Uh but there's uh during this there's a whole kaleidoscope of memories uh of their life together and uh then it goes into discussions of uh Asel himself and his obsession with his boat.

[00:14:32]And the last or the next uh one is uh in 2024 is Han Kang uh from South Korea born in 1970 and really quite a good writer. Uh but she again write wrote some fairly strange books.

[00:14:53]Uh this is the vegetarian uh and this is a story about uh basically about a descent into madness.

[00:15:01]It follows uh a woman young hai who uh has a dream and from that dream she decides to become a vegetarian.

[00:15:12]But uh this decision is opposed by her husband and uh the rest of her rest of her family. Uh there's three narrators in the story. Uh they are the her husband, then her brother-in-law, and then her sister. And each of them uh describes her slow descent into madness and how that affected each of them.

[00:15:45]Uh the next book is human is human axe and this is a story uh centered around a 15year-old boy or student who uh was killed in a 1980 uh u uprising. Uh this was a student protest against the government takeover u by a South Korean general who had uh attained power in South Korea and it's a about a violent uh slaughter of the protesters by the Korean army.

[00:16:31]Uh the next book by Kang is the white book and this is just a uh a an essay book of essays short essay essays of things that are white.

[00:16:50]Uh the next book I read is Greek lessons. This is [clears throat] about a woman who can no longer speak uh and also a professor [clears throat] who is uh losing his sight. But she uh decides to um and she lost her [clears throat] voice following a she lost her voice following a divorce.

[00:17:22]and then um um her mother's death and then losing custody of her son. But uh so she decides to take Greek Greek lessons uh trying to rec in hopes of recovering her voice. And uh the professor is teaching the Greek uh class. And at first he's uh a little put out by her silence, but then it uh eventually their meeting uh becomes a turning point in both of their lives.

[00:18:01]And [clears throat] the last book by Holland Kang that I have is we do not part. And uh I think this is very slightly autobiographical.

[00:18:13]It follows a woman writer who is haunted by uh a novel she wrote. And I I'm thinking that's probably human axe. But um she receives an urgent uh request from a friend of hers who has been taken into the hospital and the friend asks her to go to her home on a small island to look after the bird that has been has been left alone because the woman was taken into the hospital. So, she the writer uh goes to that island and uh as she's going to the house of the her friends uh she's caught in a blizzard and uh this uh the snow is kind of a metaphor for both both beauty and terror.

[00:19:12]And the last book or last winner in 2025 is Llo Kresnak Kresnor.

[00:19:24]Um he was born in 1954 and uh it was from Hungary and I've only read this one book and this is the world goes on and it's a collection of just some very strange uh stories.

[00:19:42]uh uh and uh a few of them are to me almost impossible to make sense of but some of the stories I'll in the book I'll mention is the world goes on and this is about the collapse of the twin towers uh downhill on a forest road is about an accident that tells and then tells what led up to that accident and Then uh another one, A Drop of Water, which is um a very strange story that's about 30 pages long and is told in just one long and very confusing sentence. U and that sentence begins with a man standing on one hand and takes off from there.

[00:20:36]But those are the books I've read by uh all of the Nobel la Laurates through the years. So I want to thank you for watching and hopefully I'll see you again. effects.