Judge: Nobel literature prizes 'too Eurocentric'

STOCKHOLM — American authors, you may be back in the Nobel running.

The most prominent member of the Nobel literature prize jury believes the secretive panel has been too "Eurocentric" in picking winners and said Tuesday there are many American writers who would qualify for the coveted award.

Peter Englund's comments ahead of the 2009 prize announcement on Thursday contrast with his predecessor's view last year that U.S. literature is too insular.

"In most language areas ... there are authors that really deserve and could get the Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well," Englund told The Associated Press.

Because award judges in the Swedish Academy are European they tend to have a European outlook on literature, said Englund, who replaced Horace Engdahl as the academy's permanent secretary in June.

"I think that is a problem," Englund said. "We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition."

Engdahl stirred up heated emotions across the Atlantic when he told the AP last year that "Europe still is the center of the literary world" and the quality of U.S. writing was dragged down because authors were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture."

Englund said Tuesday that the academy needs to be aware of its European bias and work on "not becoming too Eurocentric."

Europeans have dominated the literature awards in recent years. Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, all but two of the laureates have been European citizens, including last year's winner, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio of France. The exceptions were Turkey's Orhan Pamuk and J.M. Coetzee of South Africa.

This year's crop of potential candidates includes Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa, Americans Phillip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates, Israel's Amos Oz and Syrian poet Adonis.

The last American winner was Toni Morrison in 1993. Other parts of the world have waited even longer. No writer from South America has won since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982. The last Canadian-born writer was Saul Bellow, who won in 1976 and was a resident of the United States for much of his life.

Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the foundation that administers the National Book Awards, welcomed Englund's comments.