On the other hand, some minor writers have been awarded the prize. Many are simply mysterious decisions. It is difficult to understand what makes the jury prefer mediocre, provincial writers to so many greater writers. The Nobel Prize is awarded by a Swedish Academy. In particular, the writers of Sweden (a country of 10 million people) have won more prizes than the writers of all of Asia (a continent of 4.5 billion people). Is it the rest of the world that is illiterate and uncreative, or is it the Swedish academia that is parochial, nationalistic and anachronistic?
Of all literary prizes for literature the Nobel Prize has become the least meaningful.
Compare this list of Nobel laureates with my chronological list of Best Works of Literature.
|
Chronological:
1901: Sully Prudhomme (France) 1902: Christian Mommsen (Germany) 1903: Bjornstjerne Bjornson (Norway) 1904: Frederic Mistral (France) and Jose Echegaray (Spain) 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland) 1906: Giosue Carducci (Italy) 1907: Rudyard Kipling (Britain) 1908: Rudolf Eucken (Germany) 1909: Selma Lagerlof (Sweden) 1910: Paul Heyse (Germany) 1911: Mooris Maeterlinck (Belgium) 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany) 1913: Rabindranath Tagore (India) 1915: Romain Rolland (France) 1916: Carl Von Heidenstam (Sweden) 1917: Karl 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, but at the time Britain) 1924: Wladyslaw Reymont (Poland) 1925: George Bernard Shaw (Ireland, but at the time Britain) 1926: Grazia Deledda (Italy) 1927: Henri Bergson (France) 1928: Sigrid Undset (Norway) 1929: Thomas Mann (Germany) 1930: Sinclair Lewis (USA) 1931: Erik Karlfeldt (Sweden) 1932: John Galsworthy (Britain) 1933: Ivan Bunin (Soviet Union/ Russia) 1934: Luigi Pirandello (Italy) 1936: Eugene O'neill (USA) 1937: Roger Martin Du Gard (France) 1938: Pearl Buck (USA) 1939: Frans Sillanpaa (Finland) 1944: Johannes Jensen (Denmark) 1945: Gabriela Mistral (Chile) 1946: Hermann Hesse (Germany) 1947: Andre Gide (France) 1948: Thomas-Stearns Eliot (USA) 1949: William Faulkner (USA) 1950: Bertrand Russell (Britain) 1951: Par Lagerkvist (Sweden) 1952: Francois Mauriac (France) 1953: Winston Churchill (Britain) 1954: Ernest Hemingway (USA) 1955: Halldor Laxness (Iceland) 1956: Juan-Ramon Jiminez (Spain) 1957: Albert Camus (France) 1958: Boris Pasternak (Soviet Union/ 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 (France) 1965: Michail Sholokhov (Soviet Union/ Russia) 1966: Shmuel Agnon (Israel) and Nelly Sachs (Germany) 1967: Miguel Asturias (Guatemala) 1968: Yasunari Kawabata (Japan) 1969: Samuel Beckett (Ireland) 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Soviet Union/ Russia) 1971: Pablo Neruda (Chile) 1972: Heinrich Boell (Germany) 1973: Patrick White (Australia) 1974: Eyvind Johnson (Sweden) and Harry Martinson (Sweden) 1975: Eugenio Montale (Italy) 1976: Saul Bellow (USA) 1977: Vicente Aleixandre (Spain) 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (USA) 1979: Odysseus Elytis (Greece) 1980: Czeslaw Milosz (Poland) 1981: Elias Canetti (Bulgaria) 1982: Gabriel Garcia-Marquez (Colombia) 1983: William Golding (Britain) 1984: Jaroslav Seifert (Czech) 1985: Claude Simon (France) 1986: Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) 1987: Joseph Brodsky (Soviet Union/ Russia) 1988: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1989: Camilo Cela (Spain) 1990: Octavio Paz (Mexico) 1991: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa) 1992: Derek Walcott (St Lucia) 1993: Toni Morrison (USA) 1994: Kenzaburo Oe (Japan) 1995: Seamus Heaney (Ireland) 1996: Wislawa Szymborska (Poland) 1997: Dario Fo (Italy) 1998: Jose Saramago (Portugal) 1999: Gunther Grass (Germany) 2000: Gao Xingjian (China) 2001: Vidiadhar Naipaul (India) 2002: Imre Kertesz (Hungary) 2003: John Coetzee (South Africa) 2004: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria) 2005: Harold Pinter (Britain) 2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey) 2007: Doris Lessing (Britain) 2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France) 2009: Herta Muller (Germany) 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru) 2011: Tomas Transtroemer (Sweden) 2012: Mo Yan (China) 2013: Alice Munro (Canada) 2014: Patrick Modiano (France) 2015: Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus) 2016: Bob Dylan (USA) 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro (Britain) 2018: Olga Tokarczuk (Poland) 2019: Peter Handke (Austria) 2020: Louise Gluck (USA) 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania) 2022: Annie Ernaux (France) 2023: Jon Fosse (Norway) 2024: Kang Han (Korea) |
By country:
|