Nobel Prize for Literature

Literature is one of the five prize areas mentioned in Alfred Nobel's will. The award, he said, should be given to the person who "shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." It was also Nobel's express wish that in awarding the Prize, "no consideration shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive it." The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded since 1901.

2002: Imre Kurtesz
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--BookMuse features Beloved and The Bluest Eye
1992: Derek Walcott
1991: Nadine Gordimer
1990: Octavio Paz
1989: Camilo José Cela
1988: Naguib Mahfouz--BookMuse features Palace Walk
1987: Joseph Brodsky
1986: Wole Soyinka
1985: Claude Simon
1984: Jaroslav Seifert
1983: William Golding
1982: Gabriel García Márquez
1981: Elias Canetti
1980: Czeslaw Milosz
1979: Odysseus Elytis (pen-name of Odysseus Alepoudhelis)
1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977: Vicente Aleixandre
1976: Saul Bellow
1975: Eugenio Montale
1974: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson
1973: Patrick White
1972: Heinrich Böll
1971: Pablo Neruda (pen-name of Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto)
1970: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
1969: Samuel Beckett
1968: Yasunari Kawabata
1967: Miguel Angel Asturias
1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs
1965: Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
1964: Jean-Paul Sartre
1963: Giorgos Seferis (pen-name of Giorgos Seferiadis)
1962: John Steinbeck
1961: Ivo Andric
1960: Saint-John Perse (pen-name of Alexis Léger)
1959: Salvatore Quasimodo
1958v Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
1957: Albert Camus
1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955: Halldór Kiljan Laxness
1954: Ernest Miller Hemingway
1953: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1952: François Mauriac
1951: Pär Fabian Lagerkvist
1950: Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
1949: William Faulkner
1948: Thomas Stearns Eliot
1947: André Paul Guillaume Gide
1946: Hermann Hesse
1945: Gabriela Mistral (pen-name of Lucila Godoy Y Alcayaga)
1944: Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1943: no award
1942: no award
1941: no award
1940: no award
1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938: Pearl Buck (pen-name of Pearl Walsh née Sydenstricker)
1937: Roger Martin du Gard
1936: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
1935: no award
1934: Luigi Pirandello
1933: Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
1932: John Galsworthy
1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930: Sinclair Lewis
1929: Thomas Mann
1928: Sigrid Undset
1927: Henri Bergson
1926: Grazia Deledda (pen-name of Grazia Madesani née Deledda)
1925: George Bernard Shaw
1924: Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont (pen-name of Reyment)
1923: William Butler Yeats
1922: Jacinto Benavente
1921: Anatole France (pen-name of Jacques Anatole Thibault)
1920: Knut Pedersen Hamsun
1919: Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler
1918: no award
1917: Karl Adolph Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan
1916: Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam
1915: Romain Rolland
1914: no award
1913: Rabindranath Tagore
1912: Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann
1911: Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck
1910: Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse
1909: Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf
1908: Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1907: Rudyard Kipling
1906: Giosuè Carducci
1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz,
1904: Frédéric Mistral
1903: Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson
1902: Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen
1901: Sully Prudhomme (pen-name of René François Armand Prudhomme)