Herta Muller Wins Nobel

Proving once again that nobody, absolutely nobody, can predict the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy has just awarded it to Romanian-born German novelist Herta Muller, a writer who wasn't on anyone's list of Nobel possibilities. Having never read Muller, I can say nothing about her work, but I predict that there will be a lot of blather spoken today by people who are only slightly better informed than I am. This is a selection that's going to have readers scratching their heads and saying 'Who?' and going to Wikipedia for a quick info fix. So I guess the Swedish Academy has done the best thing they can really do. They've introduced me and the world to a writer who might be very good. I just hope she's better than Elfriede Jelinek...