Goldsworthy’s career as a writer spanned the first three decades of the 20th century, and he won the Nobel Prize, the most prestigious literary award, in 1932 “for his masterful storytelling skills, exemplified in The Forsyte Saga,” the judges said.
Gil Durie, emeritus associate professor at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and author of a book on Goldsworthy, said he deserved the award. “He was a realist writer, writing about issues that were considered modern in his time,” she says. “The novel is very easy to read and the characters are well drawn and distinctive. The focus is on relationships and the difficulties encountered in life. The main character is a wealthy Forsyte, but the struggles of ordinary people are also featured.”
AlamyDury points out that writers from different literary traditions did not appreciate Goldsworthy and criticized his work. “Modernists – Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce – were outraged by Mr. Goldsworthy’s Nobel Prize and tried to smear him,” she says. Still, The Forsyte Saga has proven to be a very timeless story that is still relevant today.
Britain’s Gilded Age
Forsyte’s first novel, published in 1906, is called “The Man of Property.” This is a story about Soames Forsyte, a wealthy London lawyer. He and his beautiful but emotionally distant wife Irene are at the center of a story about four generations of a family.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
