Volume 38, Number 19 · November 21, 1991
Winners
By John Banville
Jump and Other Stories
by Nadine Gordimer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 257 pp., $20.00
Playing the Game
by Ian Buruma
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 232 pp., $19.00
Asya
by Michael Ignatieff
Knopf, 309 pp., $22.00
In the 1970s I had lunch one memorable day with the French novelist Nathalie Sarraute. It was a year or two after Samuel Beckett had been awarded the Nobel Prize. I knew that Mme. Sarraute had known Beckett since before the war, and I brought up his name in the not very honorable hope of hearing some gossip about the great man. When I mentioned the prize, Mme. Sarraute said, Yes, in Paris we say he deserved it. Though her English is fluent, I assumed this somewhat peculiar phrase was a Gallicism, and I merely nodded solemnly in agreement. What I did not know, however, was that there had been a serious falling out between the two writers. Immediately, this kindly and most gentle of women flashed at me a sour look and with what for her was almost harshness said, No, we say: he deserved it.
Review, 4093 words
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