Name: Camilo José Cela
Year Won: 1989
Read: The Family of Pascal Duarte
Original Language: Spanish
Reason: ""for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability"
About: The Family of Pascal Duarte follows the life of Pascal Duarte as he has a childhood in a ne'er do well family, gets a girl pregnant and marries her, she dies, then he marries someone else and at last is on the run, ready to be garrotted. This all takes place in a scant 150 pages, so it doesn't really linger.
What I liked: The characters in this novel are wonderfully interesting. Each paragraph is practically a new and unique character study of a unique person who is explained so well I feel like I know them.
I also like all of the details of living in a small village in 1930s (I think?) Spain, as well as the interplay of religion and faith.
What I Disliked: Plot? Is there a plot? Of course there's no plot. LOL. It's a Nobel prize winning book. (Or at least no plot in a conventional sense.)
Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. This is the sort of thing that the Nobel committe digs. Religion? Lack of plot? Good writing and character studies? BRING IT ON. (Graham Greene...you were cheated because your novels tended to have plots, LOL.) I also liked this one a lot better than most as the writing really was solid, the characters interesting, and it didn't go on freaking forever. So hey! An improvement over many! (I still like plots, though...)
Next Up: "The Labyrinth of Solitude" by Octavio Paz
