Nobel Prize in Literature

Christchurch City Libraries lists literary prize winners and links to catalogue searches, but we may not hold copies of titles by all authors.

The Nobel Prize is an international award administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. This page lists the winners of the literature category. For the other categories and for some history of the Nobel Prize, browse our Nobel Prizes page.

See more literary prize winners.

2023

Jon Fosse Norway

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 was awarded to Jon Fosse "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable".

Find books by Jon Fosse in our collection

2022

Annie Ernaux France

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 was awarded to Annie Ernaux "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory".

Find books by Annie Ernaux in our collection

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2021

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zanzibar; Tanzania; United Kingdom
Biobibliographical notes

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2020
Louise Glück, U. S. A

2019
Peter Handke, Austria

2018
(This award was postponed and announced at the same time of the 2019 winner)
Olga Tokarczuk, Poland

2017
Kazuo Ishiguro, United Kingdom

2016
Bob Dylan, U.S.A.

2015
Svetlana Aleksievich, Belarus

2014
Patrick Modiano, France

2013
Alice Munro, Canada

2012
Mo Yan, China

2011
Tomas Tranströmer, Sweden

2010
Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru

2009
Herta Müller, Germany

2008
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, France

2007
Doris Lessing, United Kingdom

2006
Orhan Pamuk, Turkey

2005
Harold Pinter, United Kingdom

2004
Elfriede Jelinek, Austria

2003
John Maxwell Coetzee, South Africa

2002
Imre Kertész, Hungary

2001
V. S. Naipaul, Great Britain

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.A.

1992
Derek Walcott, Trinidad

1991
Nadine Gordimer, South Africa

1990
Octavio Paz, Mexico

1989
Camilo José Cela, Spain

1988
Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt

1987
Joseph Brodsky, U.S.S.R.

1986
Wole Soyinka, Nigeria

1985
Claude Simon, France

1984
Jaroslav Seifert, Czechoslavakia

1983
William Golding, United Kingdom

1982
Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia

1981
Elias Canetti, United Kingdom

1980
Czeslaw Milosz, Poland/U.S.A.

1979
Odysseus Elytis, Greece

1978
Isaac Bashevis Singer, U.S.A

1977
Vicente Aleixandre, Spain

1976
Saul Bellow, U.S.A.

1975
Eugenio Montale, Italy

1974
Eyvind Johnson, Sweden
Harry Martinson, Sweden

1973
Patrick White, Australia

1972
Heinrich Böll, Federal Republic of Germany

1971
Pablo Neruda, Chile

1970
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, U.S.S.R.

1969
Samuel Beckett, Ireland

1968
Yasunari Kawabata, Japan

1967
Miguel A. Asturias, Guatemala

1966
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Israel
Nelly Sachs, Germany

1965
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, U.S.S.R.

1964
Jean-Paul Sartre, France (declined)

1963
Giorgos Seferis, Greece

1962
John Steinbeck, U.S.A.

1961
Ivo Andric, Yugoslavia

1960
Saint-John Perse, France

1959
Salvatore Quasimodo, Italy

1958
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, U.S.S.R.

1957
Albert Camus, France

1956
Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spain

1955
Halldór Laxness, Iceland

1954
Ernest Hemingway, U.S.A.

1953
Winston Churchill, United Kingdom

1952
François Mauriac, France

1951
Pär Lagerkvist, Sweden

1950
Bertrand Russell, United Kingdom

1949
William Faulkner, U.S.A.

1948
T. S. Eliot, United Kingdom

1947
André Gide, France

1946
Hermann Hesse, Switzerland

1945
Gabriela Mistral, Chile

1944
Johannes V. Jensen, Denmark

1943
No Award

1942
No Award

1941
No Award

1940
No Award

1939
Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Finland

1938
Pearl S. Buck, U.S.A.

1937
Roger Martin du Gard, France

1936
Eugene O’Neill, U.S.A.

1935
No Award

1934
Luigi Pirandello, Italy

1933
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, Stateless

1932
John Galsworthy, United Kingdom

1931
Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Sweden

1930
Sinclair Lewis, U.S.A.

1929
Thomas Mann, Germany

1928
Sigrid Undset, Norway

1927
Henri Bergson, France

1926

Grazia Deledda, Italy

1925
George Bernard Shaw, United Kingdom

1924
Wladyslaw Reymont, Poland

1923
William Butler Yeats, Ireland

1922
Jacinto Benavente, Spain

1921
Anatole France, France

1920
Knut Hamsun, Norway

1919
Carl Spitteler, Switzerland

1918
No Award

1917
Karl Gjellerup, Denmark
Henrik Pontoppidan, Denmark

1916
Verner von Heidenstam, Sweden

1915
Romain Rolland, France

1914
No Award

1913
Rabindranath Tagore, India

1912
Gerhart Hauptmann, Germany

1911
Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgium

1910
Paul Heyse, Germany

1909
Selma Lagerlöf, Sweden

1908
Rudolf Eucken, Germany

1907
Rudyard Kipling, United Kingdom

1906
Giosuè Carducci, Italy

1905
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland

1904
José Echegaray, Spain
Frédéric Mistral, France

1903
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Norway

1902
Theodor Mommsen, Germany

1901
Sully Prudhomme, France

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