1901-2010     The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to an individual based on the body of their published work. In his will, Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel stipulated that a portion of his estate be awarded “to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency.” 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru) 2009: Herta Muller (Romania)2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (France and Mauritius) 2007: Doris Lessing (United Kingdom) 2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey) 2005: Harold Pinter (United Kingdom) 2004: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria) 2003: J. M. Coetzee (South Africa) 2002: Imre Kertesz (Hungary) 2001: V.S. Naipaul (Great Britain) 2000: Gao Xingjian (China) 1999: Günter Grass (Germany) 1998: José Saramago (Portugal) 1997: Dario Fo (Italy) 1996: Wislawa Szymborska (Poland) 1995: Seamus Heaney (Ireland) 1994: Kenzaburo Oe (Japan) 1993: Toni Morrison (United States) 1992: Derek Walcott (St. Lucia, West Indies) 1991: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa) 1990: Octavio Paz (Mexico) 1989: Camilo Jose Cela (Spain) 1988: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1987: Joseph Brodsky (United States) 1986: Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) 1985: Claude Simon (France) 1984: Jaroslav Siefert (Czechoslovakia) 1983: William Golding (Great Britain) 1982: Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia-Mexico) 1981: Elias Canetti (Bulgaria-United States) 1980: Czeslaw Milosz (Poland-United States) 1979: Odysseus Elytis (Greece) 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (United States) 1977: Vicente Aleixandre (Spain) 1976: Saul Bellow (United States) 1975: Eugenio Montale (Italy) 1974: Harry Edmund Martinson (Sweden) 1974: Eyvind Johnson (Sweden) 1973: Patrick White (Australia) 1972: Heinrich Böll (Germany, Federal Republic of) 1971: Pablo Neruda (Chile) 1970: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (U.S.S.R.) 1969: Samuel Beckett (Ireland) 1968: Yasunari Kawabata (Japan) 1967: Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala) 1966: Samuel Joseph Agnon (Israel) 1966: Nelly Sachs (Sweden) 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov (U.S.S.R.) 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (France) prize declined 1963: Giorgos Seferis (Greece) 1962: John Steinbeck (United States) 1961: Ivo Andric (Yugoslavia) 1960: Saint-John Perse (France) 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy) 1958: Boris L. Pasternak (U.S.S.R.) prize declined 1957: Albert Camus (France) 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez (Puerto Rico) 1955: Halldor K. Laxness (Iceland) 1954: Ernest Hemingway (United States) 1953: Sir Winston Churchill (Great Britain) 1952: François Mauriac (France) 1951: Pär F. Lagerkvist (Sweden) 1950: Bertrand Russell (Great Britain) 1949: William Faulkner (United States) 1948: T. S. Eliot (Great Britain) 1947: André Gide (France) 1946: Hermann Hesse (Switzerland) 1945: Gabriela Mistral (Chile) 1944: Johannes V. Jensen (Denmark) 1943: No award 1942: No award 1941: No award 1940: No award 1939: Frans E. Sillanpää (Finland) 1938: Pearl S. Buck (United States) 1937: Roger Martin de Gard (France) 1936: Eugene O’Neill (United States) 1935: No award 1934: Luigi Pirandello (Italy) 1933: Ivan A. Bunin (France) 1932: John Galsworthy (Great Britain) 1931: Erik A. Karlfeldt (Sweden) 1930: Sinclair Lewis (United States) 1929: Thomas Mann (Germany) 1928: Sigrid Undset (Norway) 1927: Henri Bergson (France) 1926: Grazia Deledda (Italy) 1925: George Bernard Shaw (Great Britain) 1924: Wladyslaw S. Reymont (Poland) 1923: William Butler Yeats (Ireland) 1922: Jacinto Benavente y Martinez (Spain) 1921: Anatole France (France) 1920: Knut Hamsun (Norway) 1919: Carl F. G. Spitteler (Switzerland) 1918: No award 1917: Karl A. Gjellerup (Denmark) 1916: Verner von Heidenstamm (Sweden) 1915: Romain Rolland (France) 1914: No award 1913: Rabindranath Tagore (India) 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany) 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium) 1910: Paul J. L. Heyse (Germany) 1909: Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden) 1908: Rudolph C. Eueken (Germany) 1907: Rudyard Kipling (Great Britain) 1906: Giosue Carducci (Italy) 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland) 1904: José Echegaray (Spain) 1904: Frederic Mistral (France) 1903: Bjornsterne Björnson (Norway) 1902: Theodor Mommsen (Germany) 1901: René F. A. Sully-Prudhomme (France)