Last week, Patrick Modiano was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, promptly eliciting the expected reactions. “Who the Hell Is Patrick Modiano?” the Daily Beast indignantly asked. The Guardian’s Emma Brockes argued that several of Modiano’s peers — Philip Roth in particular — may have been more worthy.

But the Nobel committee does not just ferret out works that best exemplify the literary as an obvious pre-existing category. It is one of the most prestigious institutions engaged in constructing what constitutes the literary, and then working to universalize that construction as an unquestioned standard to which all writers should aspire.

This standard has varied somewhat since the prize was founded in 1901. But since World War II it has congealed into a model of liberal, humanist, idealist universalism, which tends to emphasize moral ambiguities, individual struggles with conscience, and avowedly apolitical commentary on world affairs.