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Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature (Swedish: Nobelpriset i litteratur) is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (original Swedish: den som inom...
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Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (born 13 April 1940), usually identified as J. M. G. Le Clézio, is a globetrotting French author, professor, and Nobel laureate. The author of over forty works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le...
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Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH, OBE (née Tayler; born 22 October 1919) is a Iranian-born British writer, author of works such as the novels The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook.
In 2007, Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was described by...
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born on 7 June 1952 in Istanbul) generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and...
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, political activist and poet. He was among the most influential British playwrights of modern times. In 2005 he was awarded the...
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Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek (German pronunciation: [ˀɛlˈfʀiːdɛ ˈjɛlinɛk]) (born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and...
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John Maxwell Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee (English pronunciation: /kʊtˈsiː/) (born 9 February 1940) is an author and academic from South Africa. He is now an Australian citizen and lives in South Australia. A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee...
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Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész (Hungarian pronunciation: [imrɛ ˈkɛrteːs]; born November 9, 1929, Budapest) is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile...
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V.S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul Kt. TC (born August 17, 1932, in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago), commonly known as V. S. Naipaul, is a British novelist and essayist of Indo-Trinidadian descent. He is widely considered to be one of the masters of...
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Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian (Chinese: 高行健; pinyin: Gāo Xíngjiàn; Wade-Giles: Kao Hsing-chien, pronounced [kɑ́ʊ ɕǐŋtɕjɛ̂n]; born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese-born novelist, playwright, critic, and painter. An émigré to France since 1987, Gao was granted French...
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Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (born 16 October 1927) is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). In 1945, he came as a refugee to West Germany, but in his fiction he frequently returns...
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ sɐɾɐˈmaɡu]; born 16 November 1922) is a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive...
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Dario Fo
Dario Fo (born March 24, 1926) is an Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor, and composer. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997. In 2007 he was ranked Joint Seventh with Stephen Hawking in The Telegraph's list of 100...
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Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska (Polish pronunciation: [vʲisˈwava ʂɨmˈbɔrska], born July 2, 1923 in Kórnik, Poland) is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. In Poland, her books reach sales rivaling prominent...
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Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney (pronounced /ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/) (born 13 April 1939 ) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He currently lives in Dublin.
Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, 1939 into a family of...
Kenzaburo Oe
Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō, born January 31, 1935) is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical...
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Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931) is a Nobel Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known...
Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott (born January 23, 1930) is a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. Born in Castries, St. Lucia, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic...
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer (born 20 November 1923) is a South African writer, political activist and Nobel laureate.
Her writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement,...
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.
In India, Paz completed several works, including El mono gramático (The Monkey Grammarian) and...
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Camilo José Cela
Don Camilo José Cela Trulock, Marquis of Iria Flavia (Spanish: Don Camilo José Cela Trulock, marqués de Iria Flavia) (May 11, 1916—January 17, 2002) was an influential Spanish writer and member of the Generation of 1950.
Camilo José Cela was born in...
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic: نجيب محفوظ, Nagīb Maḥfūẓ) (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with...
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Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (Russian: Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский) (24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Soviet-Russian-American poet, essayist, and Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the...
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, the first African to be so honoured. In 1994, he was designated United Nations Educational, Scientific and...
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Claude Simon
Claude Simon (10 October 1913—6 July 2005) was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France.
Simon is often identified with the nouveau roman movement exemplified in...
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Jaroslav Seifert
Jaroslav Seifert (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjaroslaf ˈsajfr̩t]; September 23, 1901–January 10, 1986) was a Nobel Prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist.
Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, his first...
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William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980, for his novel...
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Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡaˈβɾjel ɣarˈsia ˈmarkes]) (born March 6, 1927) is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, affectionately known as "Gabo" throughout...
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Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti (Bulgarian: Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905–14 August 1994) was a Bulgarian-born novelist and non-fiction writer of Sephardi Jewish ancestry who wrote in German. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981.
Born to Jacques Canetti and...
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Czesław Miłosz
Czesław Miłosz [ˈt͡ʂɛswaf ˈmiwɔʂ] ( listen) (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer and translator. From 1961 to 1998 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. In...
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Odysseas Elytis
Odysseas Elytis (Greek: Οδυσσέας Ελύτης) (November 2, 1911—March 18, 1996) was a Greek poet regarded as a major exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Descendant of the...
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Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער) (November 21, 1902 (see notes below) – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American Nobel Prize-winning author and one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement.
Isaac Bashevis...
Vicente Aleixandre
Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo (April 26, 1898 – December 13, 1984) was a Spanish poet who was born in Seville. Aleixandre was a Nobel Prize laureate for Literature in 1977. He was part of the Generation of '27. He died in Madrid in...
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Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to have won...
Eugenio Montale
Eugenio Montale (October 12, 1896 — September 12, 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975.
Montale was born in Genoa. His family were chemical products traders (his father...
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Harry Martinson
Harry Martinson (May 6, 1904—February 11, 1978) was a Swedish sailor, author and poet. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson. The choice...
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Eyvind Johnson
Eyvind Johnson, (29 July 1900—25 August 1976) was a Swedish author. He became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1957 and shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with Harry Martinson in 1974 with the citation: for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands...
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Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian author who was widely regarded as a major English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story...
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Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll (December 21, 1917 – July 16, 1985) was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.
Böll was born in Cologne, Germany, to a...
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Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide...
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Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (English pronunciation: /soʊlʒəˈniːtsɨn/ Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, pronounced [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪˈsaɪvʲɪtɕ səlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn]) (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008) was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist,...
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Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist.
As a student, assistant,...
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Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成, Kawabata Yasunari, 14 June 1899 - 16 April 1972) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to...
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Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (October 19, 1899 – June 9, 1974) was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, and diplomat. Asturias helped establish Latin American literature's contribution to mainstream Western culture, and at the same time...
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Nelly Sachs
Nelly Sachs, (10 December 1891 – 12 May 1970) was a German poet and dramatist whose experiences resulting from the rise of the Nazis in World War II Europe transformed her into a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews....
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Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון, July 17, 1888 - February 17, 1970) was a Nobel Prize laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon, ש"י עגנון In English,...
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Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (Russian: Михаи́л Алекса́ндрович Шо́лохов, pronounced [mʲɪxɐˈil əlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕ ˈʂoləxəf]) (May 24 [O.S. May 11] 1905 – February 21, 1984) was a Soviet/Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in...
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Giorgos Seferis
Giorgos or George Seferis (Γιώργος Σεφέρης) was the pen name of Geōrgios Seferiádēs (Γεώργιος Σεφεριάδης, 13 March [O.S. 29 February] 1900 - September 20, 1971). He was one of the most important Greek poets of the 20th century, and a Nobel laureate....
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John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). He wrote a total of twenty-seven books, including...
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Ivo Andrić
Ivo Andrić (Cyrillic: Иво Андрић) (October 9, 1892 – March 13, 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, short story writer, and the 1961 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels, e.g. The Bridge on the Drina and Bosnian Chronicle dealt with life...
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Saint-John Perse
Saint-John Perse (first Saint-Léger Léger, pseudonyms of Alexis Léger) (31 May 1887–20 September 1975) was a French poet and diplomat who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry....
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Salvatore Quasimodo
Salvatore Quasimodo (August 20, 1901 - June 14, 1968) was an Italian author. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times." Along with...
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Albert Camus
Albert Camus (French pronunciation: [albɛʁ kamy]) (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French author, philosopher, and journalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He is often cited as a proponent of existentialism (the...
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Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón (24 December 1881–29 May 1958) was a Andalusian poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French...
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Halldór Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness ( ˈhaltour ˈcʰɪljan ˈlaxsnɛs (help·info)) (born Halldór Guðjónsson) (April 23, 1902—February 8, 1998) was a twentieth-century Icelandic novelist and author of Independent People, The Atom Station, and Iceland's Bell. He won...
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Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American writer and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the...
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Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and...
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François Mauriac
François Mauriac (11 October 1885 — 1 September 1970) was a French author; member of the Académie française (1933); laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1952). He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur (1958). He is acknowledged...
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Pär Lagerkvist
Pär Fabian Lagerkvist (May 23, 1891—July 11, 1974) was a Swedish author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951.
Lagerkvist wrote poems, plays, novels, stories, and essays of considerable expressive power and influence from his early...
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England,...
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William Faulkner
William Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning American author. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short stories. He was also a published poet...
