Eight Books That Illuminate the Brilliance and Biases of the Nobel Prize
Observer ·
Works by Ishiguro, Wiesel and Feynman show the range of achievement the honor has recognized, while other selections confront the prize's politics and critique the selection committees' choices. The result is a fuller portrait of an honor that has defined excellence for more than a century.
It remains a highly coveted accolade, announced every October, charting excellence in six categories: literature, chemistry, economics, peace, physiology/medicine and physics. Since 1901, the Nobel committees have recognized innovative scientists (like Marie Curie and Richard Feynman ), peace advocates (including Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa ) and literary titans (such as Gabriel García Márquez and Alice Munro ) for their achievements. Few awards compare to the Nobel Prize, which is widely recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious. Some critics, however, have questioned the prize’s choices and omissions, asking compelling questions about who gets recognized and who gets left out.
To better understand the Nobel Prize , its history and its winners, we’ve gathered some essential reading. Several are works of fiction that explore universal concerns across borders and generations. Others bear witness to extraordinary human suffering, reminding us of the power of testimony and remembrance. A final few examine the lives of Nobel laureates and the complicated politics surrounding their honors. Together, these books offer a deeper look at the prize, its legacy and the debates that have surrounded it since its founding.
When bestowing their award, the Nobel Committee said his writing exposed “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” And Kazuo Ishiguro ’s fiction certainly does that. The Japanese-British novelist, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, delivers an evocative and moving portrait of love and self-sacrifice with The Remains of the Day . It follows Stevens, a reticent butler, who looks back on his life of service at a country estate decades earlier, grappling with whether those years amounted to a fulfilling life—and whether he thwarted his chance at love and purpose. The estate’s housekeeper, Miss Kenton, represents an unrealized love that Stevens can never bring himself to express, which proves a tragedy he only understands when looking back on a life marked by devotion to someone else. Ishiguro’s novel is a profound and emotional account of choosing duty over desire, and what that costs.
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For those looking for some humor and levity, try Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! The book is less a sober biography of the celebrated physicist, Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, and more a playful profile of what primarily motivates him: curiosity. Refusing to always take accepted facts, simply because an authority has given them, is what pushed Feynman to ask questions—and revolutionize quantum electrodynamics, following earlier work on the Manhattan Project. His anecdotes, ranging from an obsession with cracking safes to tales from Los Alamos as the bomb was being built, add humor and color to daunting topics, making science feel far more accessible.
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Unlike the Nobel Prize in Literature, other Nobel categories like economics or chemistry don’t often produce singular books that encapsulate their category. Thinking, Fast and Slow is the exception. Daniel Kahneman , who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002, argues in his 2011 book that we have two modes of thought: “fast,” which is automatic and intuitive, and “slow,” which is analytical and contemplative, and both affect how we make decisions in everyday life. His extensive psychological research has had a major impact in the field of behavioral economics, revealing how we make decisions and why unconscious biases exist in human decision-making.
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“Never shall I forget that night,” Elie Wiesel declares in his harrowing account of the Holocaust. This memoir describes his years in Nazi concentration camps, enduring forced labor, persecution and the death of his family, all as he struggles to simply keep his faith. In 1986, Wiesel would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in speaking out against injustice and political apathy. Night captures this sentiment in asking that we not only bear witness to his suffering but are challenged to help prevent such atrocities and deprivations in the future. The Nobel Committee described Wiesel as a “messenger to mankind,” a plaudit that underscores the universal message of Night : the importance of always remembering past human suffering to ensure it is never repeated.
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Virginia Woolf , the celebrated English novelist, was never awarded a Nobel Prize. It may then seem an odd choice to include her manifesto, A Room of One’s Own , in a roundup of essential Nobel Prize titles. The absence is the point: A Room of One’s Own is an impassioned argument for women needing money and space to write, luxuries many were never afforded to produce great literature. Woolf’s argument provides a useful reference point for understanding the barriers women writers have faced as well as the literary talents that institutions (like the Nobel Prize) have overlooked.
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Few men shaped U.S. foreign policy like Henry Kissinger . The diplomat and political scientist was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 (alongside North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho ) for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords and a ceasefire in the Vietnam War. In the history of the Nobel Prize, this decision has remained one of the most controversial: for someone seemingly intending peace, Kissinger was one of the war’s central architects in its deadly bombing campaigns. He also only facilitated a tentative ceasefire, rather than a full-fledged peace deal. Walter Isaacson , one of America’s most prominent biographers, delivers a compelling portrait of a complicated power broker with Kissinger , which exposes the paradox of that contentious decision: a prize for peace awarded to a statesman who helped prolong and intensify conflict.
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It may be fiction, and may not even be directly about the Nobel Prize, but Meg Wolitzer ’s The Wife is a darkly funny novel about human ambition and the acclaim of prizes like it. The story follows acclaimed novelist, Joe Castleman, and his wife, Joan, as they travel abroad for him to receive the Helsinki Prize (“a few steps down from the Nobel,” Wolitzer notes). Joan is also a writer but has had to sacrifice her own literary ambitions to enable her husband’s creative output. The Wife may be about the fault lines of a marriage and the resentments in a relationship, but it’s also a wry examination of literary fame and why certain figures (often male) get fêted and those in the audience (often women) sometimes aren’t. Wolitzer’s novel proves a sharp fictional counterpoint to the Nobel mythos that critiques the gendered politics of literary acclaim.
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Finally, an exhaustive history of the prize itself. Reckoning with the real institution and its origin story, The Nobel Prize: The First 100 Years retells how Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel founded the prize in his will, using it as a way to honor those who have conferred the “greatest benefit to mankind.” From selection processes to committee votes, controversial decisions to staying relevant today, the Nobel Prize is bigger than its literal laurels and a fascinating institution in itself. This well-written history reveals how, while the prize is often defined by its winners, it has also been shaped by broader political, scientific and cultural developments.
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