From Bob Dylan to a Kenyan writer.
It would have been nice, also because the intellectual, poet, essayist and university professor Ngugi wa Thiong' or chase the Nobel Prize for Literature since 2012.
Each have bookmakers give it in the narrow list of favorites, and punctually the coveted prize goes to some other great character.
Also the final of 2017, which yesterday gave his verdict, saw Ngugi just below the winner, the Japanese naturalized British Kazuo Ishiguro.
It was hoped that the difficult situation in his country could give the Swedish jury that extra quid.
It would have been a very good signal to Kenyan politicians about the sense of culture in Kenya, to bring hindsight back into the chaotic moment of institutional crisis.
Ngugi's literary career starts from the Independence of his country and from the end of the colonial era, recounted in the novel "A grain of wheat", also translated into Italian. A story that goes back to the background and paradoxes of the historic passage from the British Empire to the Republic of Kenya, between Mau Mau, intrigues and under counter agreements, which alternate with the events of the two protagonists.
Ngugi wa Thiong' o in the 1970s was opposed to his ideas by the government of President Arap Moi, who also imprisoned him.
During that experience, he left the English language and decided to start writing stories and novels in the language of his tribe, the Gikuyu.
His novel "Devil on the Cross", which was written entirely during the years of the prison, was the first in the series and has another curious peculiarity, it was composed entirely of hidden, on rolls of toilet paper. Other novels and novels translated into Italian, such as "Petali di sangue","Dreams in wartime" and " A blessed marriage", follow.
Ngugi wa Thiong' o now lives permanently in the United States, but by now he returns safely to Nairobi.