Read the Nobels

A Perpetual Reading Challenge

In spring 2013, I browsed the internet for interesting books to read as every so often and came across a blog that is dedicated to the Nobel Prize in Literature, more precisely to the works of its many recipients since 1901. Basically, Read the Nobels serves as a collecting site for reviews (not just the links) that the participants of the perpetual reading challenge wish to share. Having launched my book blog with a review of Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti, who was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature, and planning to present more novels written by Nobel Prize laureates in due course, I didn’t hesitate to join.

In fact, everybody interested with a BLOGGER or GOOGLE account can join this challenge. It suffices to write an e-mail with the necessary data to the administrator. She will then add you as an author (click here for detailed instructions) so you can post on the site. Also bloggers ready to take more responsibility for the blog and to help revive it will certainly be welcome.

In addition, I joined the annual event Read the Nobels 2016 hosted by The Guiltless Reader on her blog Guiltless Reading as well as on Read the Nobels. And of course, I made a seperate list for it although it's pretty short.

For my and your convenience, I made a complete list of recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature since its first award in 1901 with the links to my original reviews from Edith’s Miscellany and LaGraziana’s Kalliopeion.  Of course, there is a much greater choice of reviews available on Read the Nobels because it isn’t limited to my posts.

However, this is my current count: 
62 reviews of books written by 59 Nobel Prize laureates in Literature of altogether 121.
And here comes the list:

 

2024: Han Kang (South Korea)

2023: Jon Fosse (Norway)

2022: Annie Ernaux (France)

• A Man's Place (1984), original French title: La Place
• A Woman's Story (1989), original French title: Une Femme – short review on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion

2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tansania/United Kingdom)
2020: Louise Glück (USA)
2019: Peter Handke (Austria)

• Short Letter, Long Farewell (1972), original German title: Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied

2018 (retroactively awarded in 2019): Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)
2017: Kazuo Ishiguro (United Kingdom)

• The Artist of the Floating World (1986)

2016: Bob Dylon (USA)
2015: Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich (Belarus)
2014: Patrick Modiano (France)

• So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighbourhood (2014), original French title: Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier 

2013: Alice Munro (Canada)

• Dear Life (2012) 

2012: Mo Yan (China)

• Frog (2009), original Chinese title: 蛙

2011: Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden)
2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)

• The Way to Paradise (2003), original Spanish title: El paraíso en la otra esquina

2009: Herta Müller (Germany)

• The Passport (1986), original German title: Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt

2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (France/Mauritius)

• Desert (1980), original French title: Désert

2007: Doris Lessing (United Kingdom)

• The Good Terrorist (1985)

2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)

• Snow (2002), original Turkish title: Kar 

2005: Harold Pinter (United Kingdom)
2004: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)

• Women as Lovers (1975), original German title: Die Liebhaberinnen 

2003: John Maxwell Coetzee (South Africa)

• Youth (2002)

2002: Kertész Imre (Hungary)

• Kaddish For An Unborn Child (1990), original Hungarian title: Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért 

2001: Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (United Kingdom)

• A Bend in the River (1979) 

2000: Gao Xingjian (France)

• One Man's Bible (1999), original Chinese title: 一個人的聖經 

1999: Günter Grass (Germany)

• Crabwalk (2002), original German title: Im Krebsgang 

1998: José Saramago (Portugal)

• The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989), original Portuguese title: História do Cerco de Lisboa 

1997: Dario Fo (Italy)

• The Pope’s Daughter (2014), original Italian title: La figlia del papa

1996: Wisława Szymborska (Poland)
1995: Seamus Heaney (Ireland)
1994: Ōe Kenzaburō (Japan)

• The Changeling (2000), original Japanese title: 取り替え子 (チェンジリング)

1993: Toni Morrison (USA)

• The Bluest Eye (1970) 

1992: Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)
1991: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

• None to Accompany Me (1994) 

1990: Octavio Paz (Mexico)

• The Monkey Grammarian (1974), original Spanish title: El mono gramático 

1989: Camilo José Cela (Spain)

• The Hive (1951), original Spanish title: La colmena 

1988: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)

• Midaq Alley (1947), original Arabic title: زقاق المدق 

1987: Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky (Soviet Union/USA)
1986: Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
1985: Claude Simon (France)

• The Trolley (2001), original French title: Le tramway 

1984: Jaroslav Seifert (Czechoslovakia)
1983: William Golding (Great Britain)

• Darkness Visible (1979) 

1982: Gabriel García Márquez (Columbia/Mexico)

• Of Love and Other Demons (1994), original Spanish title: Del amor y otros demonios

1981: Elias Canetti (Bulgaria/Great Britain)

• Auto-da-fé (1935), original German title: Die Blendung

1980: Czesław Miłosz (Poland/USA)
1979: Odysseus Elytis (Greece)
1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (USA)

• Satan in Goray (1933), original Yiddish title: Der sotn in Goray

1977: Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)
1976: Saul Bellow (USA)

• Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970)

1975: Eugenio Montale (Italy)
1974: Eyvind Johnson (Sweden) and
Harry Edmund Martinson (Sweden)
1973: Patrick White (Australia)

• The Tree of Man (1955) 

1972: Heinrich Böll (Federal Republic of Germany)

• Billiards at Half Past Nine (1959), original German title: Billiard um halb zehn

1971: Pablo Neruda (Chile)
1970: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (Soviet Union)

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963), original Russian title: Один день Ивана Денисовича 

1969: Samuel Beckett (Ireland)

• Murphy (1938)
• Endgame (1957), original French title: Fin de partie – short review on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion 

1968: Kawabata Yasunari (Japan)

• The Master of Go (1954), original Japanese title: 名人 – short review on LaGraziana’s Kalliopeion)
• The Old Capital (1962), original Japanese title: 古都 

1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala)

• The Green Pope (1954), original Spanish title: El papa verde

1966: Nelly Sachs (Sweden) and
          Samuel Joseph Agnon (Israel)

• Only Yesterday (1945), original Hebrew title: תמול שלשום 

1965: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (Soviet Union)
1964: declined by Jean Paul Sartre (France)
1963: Giorgos Seferis (Greece)
1962: John Steinbeck (USA)

• The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) 

1961: Ivo Andrić (Yugoslavia)
1960: Saint-John Perse (France)
1959: Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy)
1958: declined by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Soviet Union)
1957: Albert Camus (France)

• The Plague (1947), original French title: La peste

1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez (Spain)
1955: Halldor Kiljan Laxness (Iceland)

• Iceland’s Bell (1943-46), original Icelandic title: Íslandsklukkan 

1954: Ernest Hemingway (USA)
1953: Sir Winston Churchill (Great Britain)
1952: François Mauriac (France)

• Vipers’ Tangle (1932), original French title: Le Nœud de vipères 

1951: Pär F. Lagerkvist (Sweden)
1950: Bertrand Russell (Great Britain)

• The Problems of Philosophy (1912) – short review on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion

1949: William Faulkner (USA)
1948: T. S. Eliot (Great Britain)
1947: André Gide (France)

• Lafcadio’s Adventures (1914), original French title: Les Caves du Vatican

1946: Hermann Hesse (Germany/Switzerland)

• Siddhartha (1922) 

1945: Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
1944: Johannes V. Jensen (Denmark)
1943: not awarded
1942: not awarded
1941: not awarded
1940: not awarded
1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää (Finland)

• People in the Summer Night (1934), original Finnish title: Ihmiset suviyössä 

1938: Pearl S. Buck (USA)

• The Living Reed (1963) 

1937: Roger Martin du Gard (France)
1936: Eugene O’Neill (USA)
1935: not awarded
1934: Luigi Pirandello (Italy)

• One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (1926), original Italian title: Uno, nessuno, e centomila 

1933: Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Soviet Union)
1932: John Galsworthy (Great Britain)

• The Dark Flower (1913)

1931: Erik A. Karlfeldt (Sweden)
1930: Sinclair Lewis (USA)

• Babbitt (1922) 

1929: Thomas Mann (Germany)

• Royal Highness (1909), original German title: Königliche Hoheit 

1928: Sigrid Undset (Norway)

• Jenny (1911) 

1927: Henri Bergson (France)
1926: Grazia Deledda (Italy)

• The Church of Solitude (1936), original Italian title: La chiesa della solitudine

1925: George Bernard Shaw (Great Britain [Ireland])
1924: Władysław Stanisław Reymont (Poland)
1923: William Butler Yeats (Ireland)

• The Celtic Twilight (1902) 

1922: Jacinto Benavente (Spain)
1921: Anatole France (France)

• Penguin Island (1908), original French title: L’Île des Pingouins 

1920: Knut Hamsun (Norway)

• The Women at the Pump (1920), original Norwegian title: Konerne ved Vandposten 

1919: Carl F. G. Spitteler (Switzerland)
1918: not awarded
1917: Karl A. Gjellerup (Denmark) and
          Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)
1916: Verner von Heidenstam (Sweden)
1915: Romain Rolland (France)
1914: not awarded
1913: Rabindranath Tagore (India)

• The Home and the World (1916), original Bengali title: ঘরে বাইরে

1912: Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany)
1911: Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)
1910: Paul J. L. Heyse (Germany)
1909: Selma Lagerlöf (Sweden)

• The Emperor of Portugallia (1914), original Swedish title: Kejsarn av Portugallien

1908: Rudolf C. Eucken (Germany)
1907: Rudyard Kipling (Great Britain)

• Kim (1901) – short review on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion

1906: Giosuè Carducci (Italy)
1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland)
1904: Frédéric Mistral (France) and
          José Echegaray y Ezaguirre (Spain)
1903: Bjørnsterne Bjørnson (Norway)
1902: Theodore Mommsen (Germany) 

1901: René F. A. Sully Prudhomme (France)