Every October, the world of letters holds its collective breath as the Swedish Academy prepares to announce the Nobel Prize in Literature. The ceremony, steeped in tradition and secrecy, is both a celebration and a lightning rod—sparking debates about what, and who, truly deserves to be called "literature." This year, that age-old question was thrown into even sharper relief by a parallel event across Europe: the awarding of Spain’s Planeta Prize to Juan del Val, a writer and television personality whose victory reignited the perennial debate over high versus popular culture in literature.
At his 2017 Nobel acceptance speech, Bob Dylan wryly observed, "If someone had ever told me I had a chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon." According to The Hindu, Dylan’s win was just one in a long line of surprises from the Nobel committee, which has made a habit of both honoring the expected and confounding the literary establishment with its choices. The Nobel Prize in Literature, first awarded in 1901 to French poet Sully Prudhomme, has since been given 117 times to 121 laureates as of 2024. But the journey has been anything but linear: the prize was withheld during the world wars (1914, 1918, and 1940–1943) and in 1935 when no suitable candidate was found.
Despite its prestige, the Nobel’s history is not without controversy. Only 18 women have won the prize compared to 103 men, and many giants—James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy—never received the honor. The selection process itself is famously opaque: a longlist of around 220 recommendations is whittled down to 20, then five, before the Swedish Academy and its award committee make the final decision based solely on literary merit and quality. As The Hindu notes, the Nobel has also seen its share of drama, with Jean-Paul Sartre famously refusing the prize in 1964 due to his anti-establishment beliefs, and Boris Pasternak declining in 1958 under pressure from the Soviet government (his son later accepted the medal in 1989).
This year’s Nobel laureate, announced on October 9, 2025, was South Korean writer Han Kang, recognized "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life." Her win, like those before her, reignited the debate: what makes literature worthy of such distinction? Is it the dense, experimental prose that challenges and sometimes alienates, or the storytelling that resonates with the masses?
Meanwhile, in Barcelona on the night of October 15, 2025, another literary drama unfolded. At the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, Juan del Val accepted the Planeta Prize, the richest literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, worth a staggering one million euros. According to El País, del Val anticipated the criticism that often accompanies the Planeta’s choices—especially its recent tilt toward commercial, widely accessible writers, many from television backgrounds. In his acceptance speech, del Val declared, "It is written for the people, not for a supposed intellectual elite. I want to thank Planeta for turning literature into a popular event. Commercial and quality are the bases of this award. Considering it as different things is failing people."
This statement struck a nerve. The Planeta Prize, once the domain of literary heavyweights like Eduardo Mendoza, Rosa Regás, and Mario Vargas Llosa, has in recent years favored authors whose works are seen as more commercial. The shift has prompted nostalgia—and sometimes resentment—among those who recall a time when the award was synonymous with "serious" literature. As El País reports, critics like Antonio Monegal, a professor of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature at Pompeu Fabra University, draw a clear line: "Commercial literature repeats known models, that familiarity can make it reach many readers, but that is why it does not usually contribute anything to the history of literature." Yet, he acknowledges, "everything is literature: the literary ecosystem is very diverse and everything has its function."
The contrast between Han Kang’s Nobel-winning prose and del Val’s mass-market appeal could hardly be starker. As El País observed, the Nobel often goes to writers whose works are "a dark forest into which only the most seasoned readers can enter," while Planeta winners are celebrated by the broader public. Commercial authors, buoyed by mass audiences, are sometimes dismissed by the literary core—critics, academics, and prize committees—while literary authors may struggle for popular recognition.
But is the divide really so clear-cut? As Monegal points out, the boundaries blur: even past Planeta winners with literary credentials, such as Juan José Millás or Antonio Muñoz Molina, have achieved significant commercial success. The publishing industry itself reinforces the distinction, with large groups maintaining separate imprints for literary and commercial works, and even signaling the difference through book design—literary novels often sporting austere covers, commercial ones flashing bold colors and gold lettering.
The debate is not confined to Spain. The Nobel’s own history is rife with examples of both popular and obscure choices. France leads the pack with 16 Nobel laureates in literature, followed by the United States and the United Kingdom. Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian and first non-European winner in 1913, was honored for his collection Gitanjali, proving that literary merit can cross cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Yet, the tension between "high" and "low" culture persists, not just in literature but across the arts. As Monegal notes, no one questions the artistic merit of filmmakers like Luis Buñuel or Federico Fellini, even if their audiences are small, nor do they begrudge the commercial success of directors like Steven Spielberg—even if, as Monegal suggests, "Spielberg will not occupy the same place in the history of cinema as Buñuel or Fellini."
Perhaps, as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued, the distinction is as much about social signaling as it is about artistic value. Refined tastes, after all, can serve to distinguish those "in the know" from the broader public. Today’s "cultural omnivores," as Richard Peterson described them, are comfortable with both the literary monument and the breezy science fiction novel. The queues at book fairs—where commercial authors often draw the longest lines—are just one more sign of a shifting landscape.
As the dust settles from this year’s Nobel and Planeta announcements, it’s clear the debate is far from over. Whether one prizes the poetic density of Han Kang or the accessible narratives of Juan del Val, both ends of the spectrum have their champions and their critics. In the end, perhaps the enduring appeal of literature lies precisely in its ability to provoke, to entertain, and—sometimes, just sometimes—to do both at once.
