The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually since 1901. Nobel Literature laureates take part in an award ceremony and receive SEK 10 million ($1.3 million), a medal and a diploma. All Nobel Prizes are announced in the beginning of October, with the Nobel Prize in Literature being announced around October 9th.
About the Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize is named after Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, engineer inventor and the owner of Bofors, an armaments company. In his will, he determined the distribution of his enormous wealth and the establishment of the Nobel Prizes. For the Literature Nobel Prize, he decided that it should go to a writer who created "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."
The word “ideal” (idealisk in Swedish) was initially interpreted strictly to include authors who wrote along idealistic lines, whereas in recent years, the meaning of Nobel’s definition has been interpreted more liberally. The focus is now on authors of lasting literary merit and idealism that goes in the direction of humanism.
Previous Literature Nobel Prize Winners
The first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature was Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf in 1909. During the WWII years from 1940 to 1943, no prize was given and the money allocated to the prize’s fund instead. Dual prizes were given in 1917, 1966 and 1974 to commemorate Danish and Jewish literature and narrative art, respectively. Here’s a brief Nobel Prize in Literature list through the decades from 1901 to 2008.
- 2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France and Mauritius)
- 2001: V.S. Naipaul (UK)
- 1999: Günter Grass (Germany)
- 1993: Toni Morrison (USA)
- 1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
- 1974: Eyvind Johnson & Harry Martinson (Sweden)
- 1966: Shmuel Agnon (Israel) & Nelly Sachs (Sweden)
- 1954: Ernest Hemingway (USA)
- 1946: Herrmann Hesse (Switzerland)
- 1938: Pearl Buck (USA)
- 1923: William Butler Yeats (Ireland)
- 1917: Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)
- 1909: Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden)
- 1901: Sully Prudhomme (France)
Literature Nobel Prize Nomination and Selection Process
Each year, the Nobel Committee for Literature sends out invitations to hundreds of universities, professors of language and literature, previous Nobel laureates and writers’ organizations, asking for candidate suggestions. Self-nominations are not permitted. The Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize in Literature, as determined by Alfred Nobel in his will, collects all nominations by February 1 of each year.
The Academy then goes on to study each nomination carefully and compiles a list of about 20 favorites until April. By summer, these are further reduced to five authors whose work gets scrutinized during the remaining months. The Academy members vote for the winner in October and announce him or her in a press conference immediately afterward.
As one of the world’s biggest literary prizes, the Nobel Prize in Literature means prestige, acknowledgement and financial gains for any writer whose work is honored. With any prize of the magnitude, omissions speak almost as loud as inclusions and there has been many a controversy around this literary award.
The official Nobel Prize website has more information about the Nobel Prize in Literature, Alfred Nobel and the award ceremony. Readers of this article might also be interested in related articles about the PEN Faulkner Award in Fiction, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award or the Man Booker Prize.
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