SOURCE: Breslow, Stephen. “Derek Walcott: 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature.” World Literature Today 67, no. 2 (spring 1993): 267–71.

In the following essay, Breslow provides an overview of Walcott's literary accomplishments and his cross-cultural preoccupations with history, Western culture and myth, postcolonial Caribbean identity, and the legacy of racism.

I have been suggesting to colleagues and friends since the mid-1980s that someday soon Derek Walcott would be receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. My prediction has now come true, perhaps much sooner than many people would have thought. My motive here, however, is not to masquerade as a literary prophet. A much more important reflection may emerge from this consideration: what elements in Walcott's work led me, and later the members of the Swedish Academy, to an acknowledgment of Walcott's work as worthy of the Nobel Prize?

If there is any dominant principle for literary prize-giving that influences the Swedish Academy, it...