1901-2008
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.”
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)