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.
2024
Han Kang South Korea
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
In her oeuvre, Han Kang confronts historical traumas and invisible sets of rules and, in each of her works, exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in her poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.
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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".
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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".
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2021
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zanzibar; Tanzania; United Kingdom
Biobibliographical notes
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
