American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was named the winner of the Nobel prize for literature in Stockholm today “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
Speaking to reporters after the announcement, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, said she hoped the Academy would not be criticised for its choice, the Guardian reports.
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, Dylan got his first guitar at the age of 14 and performed in rock and roll bands in high school. He moved to New York in 1961, performing in the clubs and cafés of Greenwich Village. His first album, Bob Dylan, was released in 1962.
In 2008, he won a Pulitzer Prize special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
