Established by The Nobel Foundation (www.nobel.se) in 1900, The Nobel Prize in Literature has become unarguably the most notable literary landmark in the entire world. Awarded annually to a writer whose writing and person, in the words of Alfred Nobel, “shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” and “shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction,” The Nobel Prize in Literature has set the precedent for literary genius upon which all other writers are measured.

2004 Elfriede Jelinek ( Austria )
2003 J.M. Coetzee (South Africa)
2002 Imre Kertész (Hungary)
2001 V.S. Naipaul (England)
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 (U.S.)
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 (U.S.)
1986 Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
1985 Claude Simon (France)
1984 Jaroslav Seifert (Czechoslovakia)
1983 William Golding (Great Britain)
1982 Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
1981 Elias Canetti (Great Britain)
1980 Czeslaw Milosz (U.S. and Poland)
1979 Odysseus Elytis (pen name of Odysseus Alepoudhelis) (Greece)
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer (U.S.)
1977 Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)
1976 Saul Bellow (U.S.)
1975 Eugenio Montale (Italy)
1974 Eyvind Johnson (Sweden)
1973 Patrick White (Australia)
1972 Heinrich Boell (W. Germany)
1971 Pablo Neruda (Chile)
1970 Alexandr Solzhjenitsyn (USSR)
1969 Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
1968 Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
1967 Miguel A. Asturias (Guatemala)
1966 Shmuel Y. Agnon (Israel)
Nelly Sachs (Sweden)
1965 Michail A. Sholokhov (USSR)
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (France)
1963 Giorgos Seferis (pen name of Giorgos Seferiadis) (Greece)
1962 John Steinbeck (U.S.)
1961 Ivo Andric (Yugoslavia)
1960 Saint-John Perse (pen name of Alexis Leger) (France)
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy)
1958 Boris L. Pasternak (USSR)
1957 Albert Camus (France)
1956 Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spain)
1955 Halldor Kiljan Laxness (Iceland)
1954 Ernest M. Hemingway (U.S.)
1953 Sir Winston L.S. Churchill (Great Britain)
1952 Francois Mauriac (France)
1951 Par Fabian Lagerkvist (Sweden)
1950 Earl Russell (Bertrand Arthur William) (Great Britain)
1949 William Faulkner (U.S.)
1948 Thomas Stearns Eliot (Great Britain)
1947 Andre Paul Guillame Gide (France)
1946 Herman Hesse (Switzerland)
1945 Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (Denmark)
1943 No Award
1942 No Award
1941 No Award
1940 No Award
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanspaa (Finland)
1938 Pearl Buck (U.S.)
1937 Roger Martin du Gard (France)
1936 Eugene Gladstone O’Neill (U.S.)
1935 No Award
1934 Luigi Pirandello (Italy)
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (France)
1932 John Galsworthy (Great Britain)
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Sweden)
1930 Sinclair Lewis (U.S.)
1929 Thomas Mann (Germany)
1928 Sigrid Undset (Norway)
1927 Henri Bergson (France)
1926 Grazia Deledda (Italy)
1925 George Bernard Shaw (Great Britain)
1924 Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont (Poland)
1923 William Butler Yeats (Ireland)
1922 Jacinto Benavente (Spain)
1921 Anatole France (France)
1920 Knut Pedersen Hamsun (Norway)
1919 Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (Switzerland)
1918 No Award
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup (Denmark)
Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)
1916 Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam (Sweden)
1915 Romain Rolland (France)
1914 No Award
1913 Rabindranath Tagore (India)
1912 Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann (Germany)
1911 Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck (Belgium)
1910 Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse (Germany)
1909 Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof (Sweden)
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken (Germany)
1907 Rudyard Kipling (Great Britain)
1906 Giosue Carducci (Italy)
1905 Henry Sienkiewicz (Poland)
1904 Frederic Mistral (France)
Jose Echergaray y Eizaguirre (Spain)
1903 Bjornstjerne Martinus Bjornson (Norway)
1902 Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (Germany)
1901 Sully Prudhomme (France)

Other Awards