By Denny JA*

(The 2025 BRICS Literature Award Nominee from Indonesia)

Let us not allow the Nobel Prize to remain the sole compass of world literature.

For more than a century, the world has bowed before a single lighthouse of literary greatness—the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Each year, humanity turns its gaze to Stockholm, waiting to hear: who will speak for mankind this time?

But when one center defines everything, the world loses its balance.

Literature should never be a monarchy of values ruled from one pole of civilization.
It is a conversation without a center, where every language, every wound, and every beauty of the human spirit has the right to be heard.

This is where the BRICS Literature Award emerges—not to dethrone the Nobel, but to complement it.
It offers a new compass for world literature—one that is more diverse, more humane, and more just.

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The Soul of BRICS

BRICS began as an economic and cultural alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—five great nations embodying the spirit of the Global South.

It has since grown into BRICS+, now joined by Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates—together representing more than 45% of the world’s population, nearly half of humankind.

BRICS is no longer merely an economic counterweight to the G7; it has become a new axis of global civilization—
a place where ancient values and modern visions converge,
where voices once silenced now find resonance.

From this spirit, the BRICS Literature Award was born—
to celebrate works from nations too often labeled “peripheral” by the Western gaze.
For it is in these lands that the heartbeat of humanity also resounds—deeply, powerfully, and authentically.

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Three Reasons Why BRICS Literature Can Stand Beside the Nobel

1. BRICS Is the Voice of the Other World

For over a hundred years, the map of world literature was carved by the echo of a single hemisphere—Europe and North America.
Paris, London, and New York dictated what was considered “universal.”

But universality has too often been another name for dominance.

BRICS offers a new compass—one that points South.
It reminds us that human stories are not born only in the cafés of Europe,
but also in the rice fields of Java,
the savannas of Africa,
the favelas of Brazil,
and the ancient villages along the Yangtze River.

BRICS literature speaks for those long unheard—
the colonized, the migrant worker, the indigenous, the woman at the margins of power.

To uplift BRICS literature is to restore balance to the world’s narrative gravity.
It is to proclaim:

The South is not a subject to be studied; it is a chorus to be heard.

When the world reads BRICS authors,
they do not merely encounter new characters—
they rediscover their own humanity.

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2. Literature Is the Softest, Yet Strongest Diplomacy

In an age when politics is fenced by sanctions and walls,
literature moves quietly—through pages, through hearts, through empathy.

A novel from Tehran can move a reader in Johannesburg.
A poem from St. Petersburg can console a soul in Jakarta.

BRICS can become a house of translation and feeling—
a space where nations meet not in conference halls,
but in metaphors and memories.

Economic treaties may fade, political alliances may shift—
but a single poem that stirs hearts across nations endures beyond diplomacy.

If the G7 speaks through policy,
then BRICS can speak through poetry.
If the West builds soft power through entertainment,
then the Global South can build its power through enlightenment.

At its finest, literature is not propaganda—it is revelation.
It reminds us that behind every border
lives another version of ourselves.

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3. BRICS Can Become the New Nobel—A Nobel of Empathy

I say this with conviction:
The BRICS Literary Award, in time, can stand beside the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Not as a rival,
but as a necessary complement to the spirit of our age.

The Nobel emerged from Europe’s moral tradition—
from its philosophy of reason and humanism.
But BRICS arises from the soul of the Global South—
from centuries of suffering, faith, and rebirth.

If the Nobel honors the solitary genius,
BRICS can honor collective imagination—
the shared courage of nations
that turn pain into song.

It celebrates not only a writer’s brilliance,
but also a people’s endurance.

For in the South,
to write is an act of resistance;
to publish, an act of hope;
to dream amid inequality—an act of faith.

Imagine:
a novel from India in dialogue with a poem from China,
a pantun from Indonesia,
and a folktale from South Africa—
works born from the womb of colonial suffering and revolution.

Through translation funds, writers’ residencies, and AI-powered interpretation,
BRICS+ could transform world literature
from a Western monologue into a global symphony.

Technology could make a story from Rio instantly readable in Jakarta,
translated into fifty languages within seconds—
not erasing local color, but illuminating it for all humanity.

It would be a revolution in literacy—
one that shifts the “periphery” to the center of global imagination.

If the Nobel taught the world to think,
then BRICS will teach the world to feel.

And in that feeling—deep, inclusive, human—
a new center of global consciousness is being born.

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A Closing Word from Indonesia

I come from Indonesia—
a land where volcanoes and prayers share the same breath,
where people still believe
that a single word, spoken with truth,
can change destiny.

To me, BRICS is not merely an economic alliance—
it is a bridge of souls,
a meeting of civilizations
that do not compete for dominance,
but for understanding.

Through BRICS,
let us show that literature is not a luxury of peace—
but the seed of peace itself.

Let us write in the language of compassion,
translate not just words, but worlds,
and remind humanity that imagination too is a form of justice.

For when empires fall and markets turn to dust,
what remains—are stories.

And through those stories,
we will remember who we were,
who we are,
and who, together,
we still dare to become.***

Jakarta, 24 Oct 2025