Updated: December 7, 2011
Nobel Prize for Literature Project – Book List 04012011
It is an ongoing personal goal and project of mine to read and appreciate at least one work (novel, essay, or collection of short stories and/or poetry) of each of Literature Nobel Prize laureates in the original language.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobelpriset i litteratur honors the entire body of work of a living author usually nominated by the academia. The decision is made by the Nobel Prize commitee around October of each year and the official ceremony takes place that December. The award itself includes a gold medal, money, and, of course, world recognition.
As of 2011, there are 104 laureates representing 26 countries and 25 languages. There have been 4 years recognizing 2 winners (1904, 1917, 1966, 1974), 7 years of no award at all (1914, 1918, 1935, 1940–1943), and 2 denial/refuals to accept the award (Pasternak in 1958, Satre in 1964).
Frequency of Laureates by Language (25 total represented)
28 – English
15 – French (Français)
13 – German (Deutsch)
11 – Spanish (Español)
7 - Swedish (Svenska)
6 – Italian (Italiano)
5 – Russian (русский)
4 – Polish (Polski)
3 – Norwegian (Norsk), Danish (Dansk)
2 – Greek (ελληνικά), Japanese (日本語)
1 – Occitan (Occitan/Lenga d’òc), Bengali ( বাংলা), Finnish (Suomea), Icelandic (íslenska), Serbo-Croatian (Hrvatski), Hebrew (עִבְרִית), Yiddish (ייִדיש), Czech (čeština), Arabic (العربية), Portuguese (Português), Chinese (中文), Hungarian (Magyar), Turkish (Türkçe)
Of the 25 languages represented, about 3/4 are of the Indo-European family, in order of presence: Germanic (including English), Romance, and Slavic. Hellenic (Greek) and Indo-Aryan (Bengali) are also represented. Of the non-Indo-European languages, 2 are Finno-Uralic (Ugric family), 2 are Central Semitic (Afro-Asiatic family), and Southwest Turkic (arguably Altaic family; Turkish), Sinitic (Sino-Tibetan; Chinese), and Japonic (Japanese) are also represented.
Consequently, these 25 languages are written in various writing systems. The majority are written with the Latin alphabet, but there are 3 other alphabets represented, Hebrew ( אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי, 2), Cyrillic (Кириллица) , and Greek (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο), as well as 1 Brahmic abugida/alphasyllabary, Bengali (বাংলা লিপি), 1 abjad, Arabic ( أبجدية عربية); 1 logography, Chinese (汉字); and 1 mixed logography/syllabary, Japanese （漢字、ひらがな、カタカナ).
List of Laureates (in order of Language and Chronology)
I have listed by each author the main works which I have read in the original language, including various poems.
* indicates writing in more than one language
blue indicates completion of original text
green indicates incompletion and/or translation work
orange indicates current list
English (28 winners; 7 countries represented)
Rudyard Kipling (1907, UK) – The Jungle Book （1894）, “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, “The Courting of Dinah Shadd”
William Butler Yeats (1923, Ireland)
George Bernard Shaw (1925, Ireland)
Sinclair Lewis (1930, United States)
John Galsworthy (1932, UK)
Eugene O’Neill (1936, United States)
Pearl S. Buck (1938, United States)
T.S. Eliot (1948, United States/UK) - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1910,1915), The Waste Land (1922)
William Faulkner (1949, United States) – The Sound and the Fury (1929), Go Down, Moses (1942), “That Evening Sun”
Bertrand Russell (1950, UK) – The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
Winston Churchill (1953, UK) – “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” (4 June 1940)
Ernest Hemingway (1954, United States) – The Old Man and the Sea (1952), A Moveable Feast (1964), “The Three-Day Blow”
John Steinbeck (1962, United States) – Of Mice and Men (1937), The Pearl (1947), “The Chrysanthemums”
Samuel Beckett (1969, Ireland)* – Endgame (1957)
Patrick White (1973, Australia)
Saul Bellow (1976, United States)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978, United States)*
William Golding (1983, UK) – Lord of the Flies (1954)
Wole Soyinka (1986, Nigeria)
Joseph Brodsky (1987, United States)* Watermark (1992)
Nadine Gordimer (1991, South Africa)
Derek Walcott (1992, Saint Lucia)
Toni Morrison (1993, United States) – Beloved (1987)
Seamus Heaney (1995, Ireland) – Beowulf (translation, 1999)
V.S. Naipaul (2001, UK) – India: A Wounded Civilization (1977)
J.M. Coetzee (2003, South Africa) – Disgrace (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003)
Harold Pinter (2005, UK)
Doris Lessing (2007, UK) – The Grandmothers: Four Short Novels (2003)
French (15 winners; 3 countries represented)
Sully Prudhomme (1901)
Frédéric Mistral (1904)*
Maurice Maeterlinck (1911, Belgium)
Romain Rolland (1915)
Henri Bergson (1927)
Anatole France (1921)
Roger Martin du Gard (1937)
André Gide (1947) – L’immoralist (1902)
François Mauriac (1952)
Albert Camus (1957) – L’Étranger (1942)
Saint-John Perse (1960)
Jean-Paul Satre (1962) – La Nausee (1938)
Samuel Beckett (1969, Ireland)* – Fin de partie (1957); En attendant Godot (1953)
Claude Simon (1985)
J. M. G. Le Clézio (2008) - Le procès-verbal (1963)
German (13 winners; 4 countries represented)
Theodor Mommsen (1902, Germany)
Rudolf Christoph Eucken (1908, Germany)
Paul von Heyse (1910, Germany)
Gerhart Hauptmann (1912, Germany) – Bahnwärter Thiel (1888)
Carl Spitteler (1919, Switzerland)
Thomas Mann (1929, Germany)
Hermann Hesse (1946, Switzerland) – Siddhartha (1922), Der Steppenwolf (1927)
Nelly Sachs (1966, Germany)
Heinrich Böll (1972, West Germany)
Elias Canetti (1981, UK)
Günter Grass (1999, Germany)
Elfriede Jelinek (2004, Austria)
Herta Müller (2009, Germany)
Spanish (11 winners; 6 countries represented)
José Echegaray (1904, Spain)
Jacinto Benavente (1922, Spain)
Gabriela Mistral (1945, Chile) – various poems
Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956, Spain)
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967, Guatemala) – Leyendas de Guatemala (1930)
Pablo Neruda (1971, Chile) – various poems; Alturas de Macchu Picchu (1945), Canto General (1950); Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924)
Vicente Aleixandre (1977, Spain)
Gabriel García Márquez (1982, Colombia) – Cien años de soledad (1967)
Camilo José Cela (1989, Spain) – La Familia de Pascual Duarte (1942)
Octavio Paz (1990, Mexico) – various poems; El laberinto de la soledad y otras obras (1950)
Mario Vargas Llosa (2010, Peru) – Los jefes (1959)
Swedish (7 winners; all from Sweden)
Selma Lagerlöf (1909)
Verner von Heidenstam (1916)
Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931)
Pär Lagerkvist (1951)
Eyvind Johnson (1974)
Harry Martison (1974)
Tomas Tranströmer (2011)
Italian (6 winners; all from Italy)
Giosuè Carducci (1906)
Grazia Deledda (1926)
Luigi Pirandello (1934) – Uno, nessuno e centomila (1926)
Salvatore Quasimodo (1959)
Eugenio Montale (1975)
Dario Fo (1997)
Russian (5 winners; 3 countries represented)
Ivan Bunin (1933, France)
Boris Pasternak (1958, Soviet Union)
Mikhail Sholokhov (1965, Soviet Union)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970, Soviet Union)
Joseph Brodsky (1987, United States)*
Polish (4 winners; all from Poland)
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905)
Władysław Reymont (1924)
Czesław Miłosz (1980)
Wisława Szymborska (1996)
Norwegian (3 winners; all from Norway)
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1903)
Knut Hamsun (1920)
Sigrid Undset (1928)
Danish (3 winners; all from Denmark)
Karl Adolph Gjellerup (1917)
Henrik Pontoppidan (1917)
Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944)
Greek (2 winners; both from Greece)
Giorgos Seferis (1963)
Odysseas Elytis (1979)
Japanese (2 winners; both from Japan)
Kawabata Yasunari (川端 康成) (1968) – Snow Country (雪国) ( 1935)
Oe Kenzaburo (1994)
Occitan
Frédéric Mistral (1904, France)*
Bengali (1)
Rabindranath Tagore (1913, India)
Finnish (1)
Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1939)
Icelandic (1)
Halldór Laxness (1955)
Serbo-Croatian (1)
Ivo Andrić (1961, Yugoslavia)
Hebrew (1)
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1966, Israel)
Yiddish (1)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978, United States)*
Czech (1)
Jaroslav Seifert (1984)
Arabic (1)
Naguib Mahfouz (1988, Egypt)
Portuguese (1)
José Saramago (1998, Portugal) – O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo (1991)
Chinese (1)
Gao Xingjian (2000, France)
Hungarian (1)
Imre Kertész (2002)
Turkish (1)
Orhan Pamuk (2006)
