This is a serious and hopefully thought-provoking challenge. Follow the link for some hilarious extra background material, plus a list of the awards by year. Or just see how many great works of fiction you have read.
BACKGROUND: "Imagine a world in which such honors are exempt from pettiness, politics and tokenism. Imagine a Nobel Prize in which the contributions of Proust, Kafka, Nabokov and Joyce are not forgotten. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature in which genre writers have a chance." (Ted Gioia)
LAYOUT: An ODD-numbered book is a representative work (chosen by me) of the actual Nobel prize winner; the immediately following EVEN-numbered book is a work of the winner in the "alternative" supposedly just and impartial universe, for the same year (viz. who Gioia thinks should have won). The winner may be the same in both, Gioia agreeing with the Nobel selection panel in that year.
BTW, as an Australian, I mourn Gioia's culling of Patrick White.
