Civilisation/List of Nobel Prize in Literature laureates

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Revision as of 15:34, 11 October 2023 by QRNeditor (talk | contribs) (Added 2023 winner)
1901 Sully Prudhomme France Poet and essayist
1902 Theodore Mommsen Germany principally for The History of Rome
1903 Bjornstjerne Bjornson Norway Poet
1904 Frederic Mistral

Jose Eshegaray

France

Spain

Poet

Dramatist

1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz Poland Author of Quo Vadis
1906 Giosue Carducci Italy Regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy
1907 Rudyard Kipling UK First British winner. Born in British India. Youngest person to win the award (aged 41)
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken Germany Philosopher
1909 Selma Lagerlof Sweden First female winner. Gosta Berling’s Saga – debut novel
1910 Paul von Heyse Germany
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck Belgium Symbolist playwright. Works include Pelleas et Melisande and The Blue Bird
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann Germany
1913 Rabindranath Tagore India First non-European winner. Bengali polymath born in Calcutta
1914 Not awarded
1915 Romain Rolland France Supporter of Josef Stalin. Corresponded with Sigmund Freud
1916 Verner von Heidenstam Sweden
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup

Henrik Pontoppidan

Denmark

Denmark

Both writers were associated with the Modern Breakthrough period of Scandinavian literature
1918 Not awarded
1919 Carl Spitteler Switzerland principally for Olympian Spring
1920 Knut Hamsun Norway
1921 Anatole France France
1922 Jacinto Benavente Spain
1923 W. B. Yeats Ireland “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation”. First Irish winner
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont Poland
1925 George Bernard Shaw Ireland "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty"
1926 Grazia Deledda Italy Second female winner
1927 Henri Bergson France Philosopher
1928 Sigrid Undset Norway
1929 Thomas Mann Germany principally for Buddenbrooks
1930 Sinclair Lewis USA First American winner
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt Sweden Died in April 1931. Awarded posthumously
1932 John Galsworthy UK principally for The Forsyte Saga. Second British winner
1933 Ivan Bunin Russian empire First Russian winner
1934 Luigi Pirandello Italy Author of Six Characters in Search of An Author
1935 Not awarded
1936 Eugene O’Neill USA Second American winner
1937 Roger Martin du Gard France
1938 Pearl S. Buck USA "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China". First female American winner
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpaa Finland
1940 Not awarded
1941 Not awarded
1942 Not awarded
1943 Not awarded
1944 Johannes V. Jensen Denmark
1945 Gabriela Mistral Chile First Latin American winner
1946 Hermann Hesse Germany Also had Swiss citizenship
1947 Andre Gide France
1948 T.S. Eliot UK "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". Born in St. Louis, Missouri
1949 William Faulkner USA Considered the greatest writer of Southern literature
1950 Bertrand Russell UK Mathematician, philosopher, and logician
1951 Par Lagerkvist Sweden
1952 Francois Mauriac France
1953 Winston Churchill UK "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values"
1954 Ernest Hemingway USA principally for The Old Man and the Sea
1955 Halldor Laxness Iceland First Nobel Prize winner from Iceland
1956 Juan Ramon Jimenez Spain
1957 Albert Camus France Born in French Algeria. First African-born winner
1958 Boris Pasternak Soviet Union Forced to decline the prize by the Soviet Union
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo Italy for his lyrical poetry
1960 Saint-John Perse France French diplomat from 1914 to 1940
1961 Ivo Andric Yugoslavia Born in Austria-Hungary, modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina
1962 John Steinbeck USA Steinbeck was a "compromise choice" as there were no obvious candidates
1963 Georgos Seferis Greece Born in the Ottoman Empire. Greek Ambassador to the UK from 1957 to 1962
1964 John-Paul Sartre France Attempted to refuse the award, saying that he always declined official honours and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution"
1965 Mikhail Sholokhov Soviet Union Principally for And Quiet Flows the Don
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Nelly Sachs

Israel

Germany

for their works about the Jewish people
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias Guatemala poet-diplomat, novelist, and playwright
1968 Yasunari Kawabata Japan First Japanese winner
1969 Samuel Beckett Ireland Lived in Paris, and wrote in both French and English
1970 Alexander Solzhenitsyn Russia helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, in particular the Gulag system
1971 Pablo Neruda Chile Considered the national poet of Chile
1972 Heinrich Boll West Germany
1973 Patrick White Australia First Australian winner. Born in London
1974 Eyvind Johnson

Harry Martinson

Sweden

Sweden

1975 Eugenio Montale Italy
1976 Saul Bellow USA is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times. Born in Canada
1977 Vicente Aleixandre Spain was part of the Generation of '27
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer USA wrote and published first in Yiddish. Born in Poland
1979 Odysseas Elytis Greece
1980 Czeslaw Milosz Poland Born in the Russian empire
1981 Elias Canetti Bulgaria moved to England to escape Nazi persecution and became a British citizen in 1952
1982 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Colombia popularised the literary style known as magic realism
1983 William Golding UK
1984 Jaroslav Siefert Czechoslovakia
1985 Claude Simon France Born in Madagascar
1986 Wole Soyinka Nigeria First winner from sub-Saharan Africa
1987 Joseph Brodsky Soviet Union was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States
1988 Naguib Mahfouz Egypt First Arab writer to win
1989 Camilo Jose Cela Spain was associated with the Generation of '36 movement.
1990 Octavio Paz Mexico Poet and diplomat
1991 Nadine Gordimer South Africa First South African winner. Her writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid
1992 Derek Walcott Saint Lucia Author of the epic poem Omeros
1993 Toni Morrison USA First Afro-American winner
1994 Kenzaburo Oe Japan
1995 Seamus Heaney Ireland District and Circle won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006
1996 Wislawa Szymborska Poland
1997 Dario Fo Italy "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority"
1998 Jose Saramago Portugal
1999 Gunter Grass Germany Born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland
2000 Gao Xingjian China has been a French citizen since 1998
2001 V.S. Naipaul UK Born in Trinidad
2002 Imre Kertesz Hungary His works deal with themes of the Holocaust
2003 J.M. Coetzee South Africa Has been an Australian citizen since 2006
2004 Elfriede Jelinek Austria
2005 Harold Pinter UK "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms"
2006 Orhan Pamuk Turkey First Turkish Nobel laureate
2007 Doris Lessing UK Born in Iran, moved to Zimbabwe, where she remained until moving to England in 1949. Oldest winner (aged 87)
2008 J.M.G. Le Clezio France
2009 Herta Muller Germany Born in Romania. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa Peru
2011 Tomas Transtromer Sweden
2012 Mo Yan China Pen name of Guan Moye. Author of Red Sorghum
2013 Alice Munro Canada Short stories, mostly set in Huron County, Ontario
2014 Patrick Modiano France Many works about the Occupation of France in World War II
2015 Svetlana Alexievich Belarus Her books trace the emotional history of the Soviet Union through collages of interviews. Born in Ukraine
2016 Bob Dylan USA "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro UK Born in Japan. UK citizen since 1983
2018 Olga Tokarczuk Poland
2019 Peter Handke Austria
2020 Louise Gluck USA US Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004
2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah UK moved to the UK in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution
2022 Annie Ernaux France
2023 Jon Fosse Norway