((((excessively long drum roll)))) The Nobel Prize for Literature goes to...

...Svetlana Alexievich!

A few days ago, I posted how the bookies and finer gambling establishments felt, and Alexievich was the odds-on favorite. That also means if you were a Nobel groupie and a gambler with a jones to bet on obscure Belarusian writers, you really had to wager a lot of money just to make any noticeable return on investment. But, hey, congratulations if you did! You can buy lunch.

As for Alexievich, she's something of an anomaly for a Nobel winner in literature. She's a woman, for one. Out of the 107 times the award as been presented, only 14 women have won.

Secondly, she's from Eastern Europe--a region that has been moderately underrepresented by the selection committee in the award's history. (Only three winners have come from Russia [when it was the Soviet Union {and if we count that Alexievich was born in the Soviet Union, we can bump that up to four}], and four winners from Poland. And then there's the matter of whether you consider Poland as Eastern Europe [I don't.]. After that...well, that's it! No one else.)

And, lastly, Alexievich largely won on her nonfiction writing that details the history of major Belarusian and Russian/Soviet events, like the Chernobyl disaster. While many winners of the Nobel have written memoirs and essays, only two other winners have ever won largely on the back of historical nonfiction: Winston Churchill (1953) and Theodor Mommsen (1902).

And let me tell you--everyone knows you would have made some serious bank betting on Mommsen in 1902.






Google and Wikipedia both describe Poland as an Eastern European country--and who am I to disagree with the Great Google Machine? But if you draw a line of longitude down from the western side of Poland, it cuts through Italy. The eastern half of Poland's longitude cuts through Greece. Does anyone consider Italy and Greece part of Eastern Europe?

I didn't think so.