To be honest her books are simply boring. Nobel prize in literature used to mean something, but recently it isn’t about literature anymore, it’s about “who furthers progressive-left agenda the most?”
I agree about the boring part. I'm Pole and hold all previous Polish Nobel winners in high regard, but, when it was announced that Tokarczuk got it, me and my friends were shocked. Her books are such shallow crap, compared to works of the greats who got the prize before, it's just baffling.
The same Nobel prize that was given to Peter Handke in 2019? I like Handke's work an awful lot, as I do Tokarczuk's, but he's certainly not someone who furthers any "progressive-left agenda".
It's useless to discuss the "boring" aspect as it's completely subjective, but right-left is very easy to explain. When you look at modern art (the last 50 years or more), it is extremely difficult to find right-wing artists. They definitely exist, but they are outnumbered by those who don't show any political affiliation or those who are openly left.
It's quite natural: the left in general is more about the freedom of expression, "progress" as in finding new ways, whereas the right is by nature conservative, so it's harder to make new breakthroughs in art.
it is extremely difficult to find right-wing artists
Perhaps that bias has something to do with it. Either way, back when Wisława Szymborska won the literature prize, there was a clear right-wing candidate, Zbigniew Herbert. They still chose the poet who wrote paeans to Stalin.
This is such conspiratorial nonsense. Everything you don't like is a 'progressive-left agenda'. I've read Drive Your Plow, it's good. The protagonist is an older woman and the story meanders a bit, but the ending ties it all together wonderfully. The character meanders, so the story does too.
This idea that art is right or left wing purely because the authors don't support the worst head banging of western right wing parties is such bollocks.
