The Nobel Prize in Literature, which will be announced on Thursday, is awarded not for individual works but for a body of work published in the course of a career. The youngest literature laureate was Rudyard Kipling in 1907, when he turned 42, but he had been publishing steadily since he was 20. The second youngest was Albert Camus in 1957, when he turned 44, but he had already published a dozen or more books, including "L'Étranger" and "Le Mythe de Sisyphe" in 1942 alone (at 29). By my count, six others have received the award before turning 50. It makes it hard to win it if you die too young. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 October 2022)
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