Nobel Prizes in Literature

• Deutsche Version

  (List, not checked)

1901

R. F. A. Sulley Prudhomme (France)

1902

Th. Mommsen (Germany)

1903

B. Bjørnson (Norway)

1904

J. Echegaray (Spain)

F. Mistral (France)

1905

H. Sienkiewicz (Poland)

1906

G. Carducci (Italy)

1907

R. Kipling (United Kingdom)

1908

R. Eucken (Germany)

1909

S. Lagerlöf (Sweden)

1910

P. Heyse (Germany)

1911

M. Maeterlinck (Belgium)

1912

G. Hauptmann (Germany)

1913

R. Tagore (India)

1914 -

1915

R. Rolland (France)

1916

V. v. Heidenstam (Sweden)

1917

K. Gjellerup (Denmark)

H. Pontoppidan (Denmark)

1918 -

1919

C. Spitteler (Switzerland)

1920

K. Hamsun (Norway)

1921

A. France (J. A. Thibault) (France)

1922

J. Benavente (Spain)

1923

W.B. Yeats (Ireland)

1924

W. Reymont (Poland)

1925

G.B. Shaw (United Kingdom)

1926

Grazia Deledda (Italy)

1927

H. Bergson (France)

1928

Sigrid Undset (Norway)

1929

Th. Mann (Germany)

1930

S. Lewis (USA)

1931

E. A. Karlfeldt (Sweden)

1932

J. Galsworthy (United Kingdom)

1933

I. A. Bunin (France, Russia)

1934

L. Pirandello (Italy)

1935 -

1936

E. O'Neill (USA)

1937

R. Martin du Gard (France)

1938

Pearl S. Buck (USA)

1939

F. E. Sillanpää (Finnland)

1940 -

1941 -

1942 -

1943 -

1944

Johannes V. Jensen (Denmark)

1945

Gabriela Mistral (L. Godoy y Alcayaga) (Chile)

1946

Hermann Hesse (Switzerland, Germany)

1947

A. Gide (France)

1948

T.S. Eliot (United Kingdom, USA)

1949

W. Faulkner (USA)

1950

Lord B. A. W. Russell (United Kingdom)

1951

P. Lagerkvist (Sweden)

1952

F. Mauriac (France)

1953

Sir W. Churchill (United Kingdom)

1954

E. Hemingway (USA)

1955

H.K. Laxness (Island)

1956

J. R. Jiménez (Spain)

1957

A. Camus (France)

1958

B. Pasternak (Soviet Union)

1959

S. Quasimodo (Italy)

1960

Saint-John Perse (A. Léger) (France)

1961

I. Andric (Yugoslavia)

1962

J. Steinbeck (USA)

1963

G. Seferis (Greece)

1964

J.-P. Sartre (France)

1965

M. Sholokhov (Soviet Union)

1966

S.J. Agnon (Israel, Austria)

N. Sachs (Sweden, Germany)

1967

M.A. Asturias (Guatemala)

1968

Y. Kawabata (Japan)

1969

S. Beckett (Ireland)

1970

A. Solzhenitsyn (Soviet Union)

1971

P. Neruda (Chile)

1972

H. Böll (Germany)

1973

P. White (Australien)

1974

E. Johnson (Sweden)

H. Martinson (Sweden)

1975

E. Montale (Italy)

1976

S. Bellow (USA)

1977

V. Aleixandre (Spain)

1978

I. B. Singer (USA)

1979

O. Elytis (Greece)

1980

C. Milosz (Poland)

1981

E. Canetti (United Kingdom, Bulgaria)

1982

G. García Marquez (Colombia)

1983

W. G. Golding (United Kingdom)

1984

J. Seifert (Czechoslovakia)

1985

Cl. Simon (France)

1986

W. Soyinka (Nigeria)

1987

J. Brodsky (USA)

1988

N. Mahfuz (Egypt)

1989

C. J. Cela (Spain)

1990

Octavio Paz (Mexico)

1991

Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

1992

Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia, *1930-01-23)

1993

Toni Morrison (USA, *1931-02-18)

1994

Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)

1995

Seamus Heaney (Ireland, *1939-04-13)

for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past

1996

Wislawa Szymborska (Poland, *1923-07-02)

for "poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"

1997

Dario Fo (Italy, *1926)

dramatist and actor, one of the leading figures in modern farce and political drama, "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden"

1998

José Saramago (Portugal, *1922)

a writer of prose, from a working-class background, "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality"

1999

Günter Grass (Germany, *1927-10-16)

"Whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history"; 1959 first novel: "The Tin Drum"

2000

Gao Xingjian (China/France, *1940)

"for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama"

2001

Sir V.S. Naipaul (United Kingdom, *1932)

"for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories"

2002

Imre Kertész (Hungary, *1929)

"for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"

2003

John Maxwell Coetzee (South Africa, *1940)

"who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider"

2004

Elfriede Jelinek (Austria, *1946)

"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"

2005

Harold Pinter (United Kingdom, *1930)

"who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms"

2006

Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, *1952)

"who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures"

2007

Doris Lessing (United Kingdom, 1919-10-22 - 2013-11-17)

"that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny"

2008

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (France and Mauritius, *1940)

"author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization"

2009

Herta Müller (Germany, *1953 in Romania)

"who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed"

2010

Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, *1936)

"for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat"

2011

Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden, *1931)

"because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality"

2012

Mo Yan (China, *1955)

"who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary"

2013

Alice Munro (Canada, *1931)

"master of the contemporary short story"

2014

Patrick Modiano (France, *1945)

"for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation"

2015

Svetlana Alexievich (Ukraine, Belarus, *1948)

"for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time"

2016

Bob Dylan (USA, *1941)

"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"

2017

Kazuo Ishiguro (Japan, United Kingdom, *1954)

"who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

2018

Olga Tokarczuk (Poland, *1962)

"for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life"

2019

Peter Handke (Austria, France, *1942)

"for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience"