The famous literary canon compiled by Pierre Boncenne and presented by Bernard Pivot, boasted to list the 2500 best books worth reading in a lifetime.
In the last pages of “La Bibliothèque Idéale”, the Nobel prize winners were listed according to their nationality. As the “Bibliothèque” was printed in 1988, the last winner mentioned was the 1987 laureate Joseph Brodsky.
I was curious to know how many of the future Nobel prize winners Boncenne could predict and till what year his foresight stretched.
I selected all winners since 1988 and checked their names in the glossary with surprising results :
1988: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) listed in 1987 as one of the ten best writers from the Maghreb
1989: Camilo Cela (Spain) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers from Spain
1990: Octavio Paz (Mexico) listed in 1987 as one of the ten best writers from Latin America
1991: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa) missed !
1992: Derek Walcott (St Lucia) missed !
1993: Toni Morrison (USA) missed !
1994: Kenzaburo Oe (Japan) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers from Asia
1995: Seamus Heaney (Ireland) missed !
1996: Wislawa Szymborska (Poland) missed !
1997: Dario Fo (Italy) missed !
1998: Jose Saramago (Portugal) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers from Portugal and Brasil
1999: Gunther Grass (Germany) listed in 1987 as one of the twenty-five best writers from Germany
2000: Gao Xingjian (China) missed!
2001: Vidiadhar Naipaul (India) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers from Asia
2002: Imre Kertesz (Hungary) missed !
2003: John Coetzee (South Africa) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers from England ( British Commenwealth )
2004: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria) missed !
2005: Harold Pinter (Britain) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers for theater.
2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey) missed !
2007: Doris Lessing (Britain) listed in 1987 as one of the twenty-five best writers from England
2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France) in 1987 listed as one of the fifty best writers from France
2009: Herta Muller (Germany) missed !
2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru) in 1987 listed as one of the ten best writers from Latin America
2011: Tomas Transtroemer (Sweden) missed !
2012: Mo Yan (China) missed !
2013: Alice Munro (Canada) missed !
2014: Patrick Modiano (France) listed in 1987 as one of the fifty best writers from France
2015: Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus) missed !
2016: Bob Dylan (USA) missed for obvious reason
2017: Kazuo Ishiguro (Britain) missed
2018: Olga Tokarczuk (Poland) missed !
2019: Peter Handke (Austria) missed !
This means that they predicted Modiano’s reputation 26 years in advance!
Most impressive is Mario Vargas Llosa’s record, of whom in 1987 it was already obvious that he was one of the greatest talents in the Spanish language but who received the price only 22 years later!
