Nobel Prize Winners in Literature

Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded each October by the Swedish Academy. In some years, joint awards were given to two authors. For more information on the prize and the laureates, see http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/.

Nobel Prize Winners in Literature
Year Laureate Country
1901 Sully Prudhomme France
1902 Theodor Mommsen Germany
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Norway
1904 Frédéric Mistral France
1904 José Echegaray Spain
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz Poland
1906 Giosuè Carducci Italy
1907 Rudyard Kipling U.K.
1908 Rudolf Eucken Germany
1909 Selma Lagerlöf Sweden
1910 Paul von Heyse Germany
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck Belgium
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann Germany
1913 Rabindranath Tagore India
1914 No prize given  
1915 Romain Rolland France
1916 Verner von Heidenstam Sweden
1917 Karl Gjellerup Denmark
1917 Henrik Pontoppidan Denmark
1918 No prize given  
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 U.S.
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt Sweden
1932 John Galsworthy U.K.
1933 Ivan Bunin Russia/France
1934 Luigi Pirandello Italy
1936 Eugene O'Neill U.S.
1937 Roger Martin du Gard France
1938 Pearl S. Buck U.S.
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää Finland
1940 No prize given  
1941 No prize given  
1942 No prize given  
1943 No prize given  
1944 Johannes V. Jensen Denmark
1945 Gabriela Mistral Chile
1946 Hermann Hesse Switzerland
1947 André Gide France
1948 T. S. Eliot U.K.
1949 William Faulkner U.S.
1950 Bertrand Russell U.K.
1951 Pär Lagerkvist Sweden
1952 François Mauriac France
1953 Winston Churchill U.K.
1954 Ernest Hemingway U.S.
1955 Halldòr Laxness Iceland
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez Spain
1957 Albert Camus France
1958 Boris Pasternak (declined) U.S.S.R.
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo Italy
1960 Saint-John Perse France
1961 Ivo Andric Yugoslavia
1962 John Steinbeck U.S.
1963 Giorgios Seferis Greece
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined) France
1965 Mikhail Sholokhov U.S.S.R.
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon Israel
1966 Nelly Sachs Germany/Sweden
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias Guatemala
1968 Yasunari Kawabata Japan
1969 Samuel Beckett Ireland/France
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn U.S.S.R.
1971 Pablo Neruda Chile
1972 Heinrich Böll Germany
1973 Patrick White Australia
1974 Eyvind Johnson Sweden
1974 Harry Martinson Sweden
1975 Eugenio Montale Italy
1976 Saul Bellow U.S.
1977 Vicente Aleixandre Spain
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer U.S.
1979 Odysseus Elytis Greece
1980 Czeslaw Milosz Poland/U.S.
1981 Elias Canetti Bulgaria/U.K.
1982 Gabriel García Márquez Colombia
1983 William Golding U.K.
1984 Jaroslav Seifert Czechoslovakia
1985 Claude Simon France
1986 Wole Soyinka Nigeria
1987 Joseph Brodsky U.S.S.R./U.S.
1988 Naguib Mahfouz Egypt
1989 Camilo José Cela Spain
1990 Octavio Paz Mexico
1991 Nadine Gordimer South Africa
1992 Derek Walcott St. Lucia/Trinidad
1993 Toni Morrison U.S.
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 Gao Xingjian France
2001 V. S. Naipaul U.K.
2002 Imre Kertész Hungary
2003 J. M. Coetzee South Africa
2004 Elfriede Jelinek Austria
2005 Harold Pinter U.K
2006 Orhan Pamuk Turkey
2007 Doris Lessing U.K
2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clèzio France
2009 Herta Müller Germany
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa Peru
2011 Tomas Tranströmer Sweden
2012 Mo Yan China
2013 Alice Munro Canada
2014 Patrick Modiano France
2015 Svetlana Alexievich Belarus
2016 Bob Dylan U.S.
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro U.K.
2018 (prize awarded in 2019) Olga Tokarczuk Poland
2019 Peter Handke Austria
2020 Louise Glück U.S.
2021 Abdulrazak Gurnah U.K.
2022 Annie Ernaux France

Women Who Have Won the Nobel Prize for Literature

  1. Selma Lagerlöf (1909)
  2. Grazia Deledda (1926)
  3. Sigrid Undset (1928)
  4. Pearl S. Buck (1938)
  5. Gabriela Mistral (1945)
  6. Nelly Sachs (1966)
  7. Nadine Gordimer (1991)
  8. Toni Morrison (1993)
  9. Wislawa Szymborska (1996)
  10. Elfriede Jelinek (2004)
  11. Doris Lessing (2007)
  12. Herta Müller (2009)
  13. Alice Munro (2013)
  14. Svetlana Alexievich (2015)
  15. Olga Tokarczuk (2018)
  16. Louise Glück (2020)
  17. Annie Ernaux (2022)
 
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Updated: October 8, 2022