Nobel Laureates in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 102 times to 106 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2009.

All Nobel Laureates in Literature

I plan to read at least one work from the Nobel Laureates in Literature. As there are so many of them, I don’t dream to tackle all of them, but I’ll die trying. The ones that have come to my attention and require reading sooner than later: Jose Saramago, Kenzaburo Oe, Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, Gao Xingjian, Elfriede Jelinek, William Golding, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, and Rudyard Kipling.

* 2010 – Mario Vargas Llosa
* 2009 – Herta Müller
* 2008 – Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
* 2007 – Doris Lessing
* 2006 – Orhan Pamuk
* 2005 – Harold Pinter
* 2004 – Elfriede Jelinek

2003 – J. M. Coetzee

“who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider”

South Africa b. 1940

Books read:
Disgrace

* 2002 – Imre Kertész
* 2001 – V. S. Naipaul
* 2000 – Gao Xingjian
* 1999 – Günter Grass
* 1998 – José Saramago
* 1997 – Dario Fo
* 1996 – Wislawa Szymborska
* 1995 – Seamus Heaney
* 1994 – Kenzaburo Oe
* 1993 – Toni Morrison
* 1992 – Derek Walcott
* 1991 – Nadine Gordimer
* 1990 – Octavio Paz
* 1989 – Camilo José Cela
* 1988 – Naguib Mahfouz
* 1987 – Joseph Brodsky
* 1986 – Wole Soyinka
* 1985 – Claude Simon
* 1984 – Jaroslav Seifert
* 1983 – William Golding

1982 – Gabriel García Márquez

“for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts”

Colombia b. 1928

Books read:
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

* 1981 – Elias Canetti
* 1980 – Czeslaw Milosz
* 1979 – Odysseus Elytis
* 1978 – Isaac Bashevis Singer
* 1977 – Vicente Aleixandre
* 1976 – Saul Bellow
* 1975 – Eugenio Montale
* 1974 – Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
* 1973 – Patrick White
* 1972 – Heinrich Böll
* 1971 – Pablo Neruda
* 1970 – Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
* 1969 – Samuel Beckett

1968 – Yasunari Kawabata

“for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind”

Japan b. 1899 d. 1972

Books read:
Snow Country

* 1967 – Miguel Angel Asturias
* 1966 – Shmuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
* 1965 – Mikhail Sholokhov
* 1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre
* 1963 – Giorgos Seferis

1962 – John Steinbeck

“for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception”

USA b. 1902 d. 1968

Books read:
East of Eden
* 1961 – Ivo Andric
* 1960 – Saint-John Perse
* 1959 – Salvatore Quasimodo
* 1958 – Boris Pasternak
* 1957 – Albert Camus
* 1956 – Juan Ramón Jiménez
* 1955 – Halldór Laxness
* 1954 – Ernest Hemingway
* 1953 – Winston Churchill
* 1952 – François Mauriac
* 1951 – Pär Lagerkvist
* 1950 – Bertrand Russell
* 1949 – William Faulkner
* 1948 – T.S. Eliot
* 1947 – André Gide
* 1946 – Hermann Hesse
* 1945 – Gabriela Mistral
* 1944 – Johannes V. Jensen
* 1943 – The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1942 – The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1941 – The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1940 – The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1939 – Frans Eemil Sillanpää

1938 – Pearl Buck

“for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces”

USA b. 1892 d. 1973

Books read:
The Good Earth

* 1937 – Roger Martin du Gard
* 1936 – Eugene O’Neill
* 1935 – The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1934 – Luigi Pirandello
* 1933 – Ivan Bunin
* 1932 – John Galsworthy
* 1931 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt
* 1930 – Sinclair Lewis
* 1929 – Thomas Mann
* 1928 – Sigrid Undset
* 1927 – Henri Bergson
* 1926 – Grazia Deledda
* 1925 – George Bernard Shaw
* 1924 – Wladyslaw Reymont
* 1923 – William Butler Yeats
* 1922 – Jacinto Benavente
* 1921 – Anatole France
* 1920 – Knut Hamsun
* 1919 – Carl Spitteler
* 1918 – The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1917 – Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
* 1916 – Verner von Heidenstam
* 1915 – Romain Rolland
* 1914 – The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section
* 1913 – Rabindranath Tagore
* 1912 – Gerhart Hauptmann
* 1911 – Maurice Maeterlinck
* 1910 – Paul Heyse
* 1909 – Selma Lagerlöf
* 1908 – Rudolf Eucken
* 1907 – Rudyard Kipling
* 1906 – Giosuè Carducci
* 1905 – Henryk Sienkiewicz
* 1904 – Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
* 1903 – Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
* 1902 – Theodor Mommsen
* 1901 – Sully Prudhomme