Civilisation/List of Nobel Prize in Literature laureates
From Quiz Revision Notes
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 |