Eminent writer Ruskin Bond on Friday said the decision to award the Nobel Prize for Literature to singer-poet Bob Dylan was “not a right one” and is an “insult” to all the great writers who have received the award so far.
“Dylan is a successful musician and a great entertainer, but I am not sure whether he was given the award in the right category,” Bond said during a conversation organised as part of ‘River Talks -- the North East Literary Festival’.
Dylan is not really a writer and awarding the prize to him in the literature category is a “great insult to all the writers who have already received the award and also to those who rightly deserve it”, the author said.
“The decision of the Nobel Committee, however, has on several occasions not been right and there is not much one can do about it,” said the Padma Bhushan-winning author who has been writing for more than half a century now.
Bond, who lives in Mussoorie and has authored over 500 short stories, essays and novels along with more than 50 books for children, said he has always tried to be a “visual writer and tried to create a picture for his readers”.
“I have been always been interested in my surroundings and I visualise a story, write it out in my mind and then express it effectively in a few words,” said Bond, the author of “Night Train at Deoli”, “Time stops at Shamli”, “Our Trees still grow in Dehra”, among others.
He said he wrote his first book “Room on the Roof” while studying in England as he was assailed by a strong feeling of homesickness for India.
Image: Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra and his team paint a 60 foot by 150 foot mural of musician Bob Dylan on the side of a building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
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