Writers Who Have Received the Nobel Prize in Literature

                          

The Nobel Prize winners for literature are determined each year by the five membership committees formed by the Swedish Academy, and the prize is funded by the Nobel Foundation.  Nobel Prizes for literature are given to "the author who expresses an idealistic tendency in the most different way", in the words of Alfred Nobel.

The Nobel Prize in Literature is held every year on December 10th, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. The Nobel Prize for Literature was first awarded in 1901, and the first person to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature was the French poet Sully Prudhomme. Here is the list of Nobel Prize winners by year...      

1902 Sully Prudhomme (France)

1902 Theodor Mommsen (Germany)

1903 Biørnsterne Biørnson (Norway)

1904 Frédéric Mistral (France) and Jose Echegaray (Spain)

1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland)

1906 Giosuè Carducci (Italy)

1907 Rudyard Kipling (England/Britain)

1908 Rudolph Christoph Eucken (Germany)

1909 Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden)

1910 Paul Heyse (Germany)

1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)

1912 Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany)

1913 Rabindranath Tagore (India)

1915 Romain Rolland (France)

1916 Verner von Heidenstam (Sweden)

1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup (Denmark) and Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)

1919 Carl Spitteler (Switzerland)

1920 Knut Hamsun (Norway)

1921 Anatole France (France)

1922 Jacinto Benavente (Spain)

1923 William Butler Yeats (Ireland)

1924 Wladyslaw Reymont (Poland)

1925 George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)

1926 Grazia Deledda (Italy)

1927 Henri Bergson (France)

1928 Sigrid Undset (Norway)

1929 Thomas Mann (Germany)

1930 Sinclair Lewis (USA)

1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Sweden)

1932 John Galsworthy (England/ Britain)

1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Russia)

1934 Luigi Pirandello (Italy)

1936 Eugene O’Neill (USA)

1937 Roger Martin du Gard (France)

1938 PearL s. Buck (USA)

1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää (Finland)

1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (Denmark)

1945 Gabriela Mistral (Chile)

1946 Hermen Hesse (Switzerland)

1947 André Gide (France) 

1948 T.S. Eliot (USA/England, Britain)

1949 William Faulkner (USA)

1950 Bertrand Russell (England/Britain)

1951 Pär Lagerkvist (Sweden)

1952 François Mauriac (France)

1953 Sir Winston Churchill (England/Britain)

1954 Ernest Hemingway (USA)

1955 Halldór Laxness (Iceland)

1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez (Spain)

1957 Albert Camus (France)

1958 Boris Pasternak (Russia)

1959 Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy)

1960 Saint-John Perse (France)

1961 Ivo Andric (Yugoslavia)

1962 John Steinbeck (USA)

1963 Giorgos Seferis (Greece)

1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (reddeti) (France)

1965 Mihail Şolohov (USSR)

1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Israel) and Nelly Sachs (West Germany)

1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala)

1968 Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)

1969 Samuel Beckett (Ireland)

1970 Aleksandr Soljenitsin (USSR)

1971 Pablo Neruda (Chile)

1972 Heinrich Böll (West Germany)

1973 Patrick White (Australia)

1974 Eyvind Johnson (Sweden) and Harry Martinson (Sweden)

1975 Eugenio Montale (Italy)

1976 Saul Bellow (Canada/USA)

1977 Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)

1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer (USA)

1979 Odysseas Elytis (Greece)

1980 Czeslaw Milosz (Poland/USA)

1981 Elias Canetti (England/Britain)

1982 Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)

1983 William Golding (England/Britain)

1984 Jaroslav Seifert (Czechoslovakia)

1985 Claude Simon (France)

1986 Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)

1987 Joseph Brodsky (Russia/USA)

1988 Necip Mahfuz (Egypt)

1989 Camilo José Cela (Spain)

1990 Octavio Paz (Mexican)

1991 Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

1992 Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)

1993 Toni Morrison (USA)

1994 Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)

1995 Seamus Heaney (Ireland)

1996 Wislawa Szymborska (Poland)

1997 Dario Fo (Italy)

1998 José Saramago (Portugal)

1999 Günter Grass (Germany)

2000 Gaoo Xingjian (France)

2001 Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (England/Britain)
2002 Imre Kertész (Hungary)
2003 John Maxwell Coetzee (South Africa)
2004 Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)
2005 Harold Pinter (England/Britain)

2006 Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)

2007 Doris Lessing (England/ Britain)

2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (France)

2009 Herta Müller (Germany)

2010 Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

2011 Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (Sweden)
2012 Mo Yan (Guan Moye) (China)
2013 Alice Munro (Canada)
2014 Patrick Modiano (France)
2015 Svetlana Aleksiyeviç (Belarus)
2016 Bob Dylan (Real name: Robert Allen Zimmerman) (USA)
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro (British citizen of Japanese descent)

2018 Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)

2019 Peter Handke (Austuria)

2020 Louise Glück(USA)

2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania)

2022 Annie Ernaux (France)

Details on the Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prizes for Literature, which have been given since 1901, have not been given in some years, and the number of years in which they were not awarded in totals is 7. Years without a Nobel Prize in Literature; 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943. 

The authors who received the Nobel Prize in Literature the most were French writers. Until 2023, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to 16 French writers. 

Swedish writers Selma Lagerlöf received the Nobel Prize in Literature İN 1909. Selma Lagerlöf became the first woman writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In 1953, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, although he was not a literary man. The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in recognition of Winston Churchill's memories.

Russian writer Boris Pasternak, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, had to refuse this award due to pressures of the Soviet regime. 

French writer Jean Paul Sartre, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, did not accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. Jean Paul Sartre is the only writer to refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature. Jean Paul Sartre is a writer who refused all awards given to him.

Final Notes... Nobel Prizes

Nobel prizes were first awarded in 1901.

Nobel prizes are the awards that are started to be given every year in 5 fields, namely physics, chemistry, medicine/physiology, peace and literature, in order to reward those who serve humanity by the foundation, which was established with the will of the Swedish chemical engineer Alfred Nobel. Since 1968, the Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded every year.