Almost Nobel-Prize Winners, Part 2: Three Russians

About this course:

Every year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests regularly for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates and the presidents of writers' organizations are all allowed to nominate a candidate (besides themselves).  We read short stories of three celebrated literary figures, all Russian—Tolstoy, Chekhov and Nabokov—whose work has been deemed worthy of the Nobel-Prize in Literature but who have not won the prize. Leo Tolstoy was nominated five consecutive times (from 1902-1906), Vladimir Nabokov was nominated eight times, and Anton Chekhov was never nominated.