Updated Nobel Prize Winners list
I finished Svetlana Alexievich's (winner, 2015) Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. This book will haunt me forever.
It's unfair to call this Alexievich's book. With the exception of the last two pages it is all transcripts of interviews with residents of Chernobyl (Alexievich's prompts are not even listed), as well as a couple of other related Russians. The book is powerful. The stories are hard.
Most especially hard are the tales of women who watched their husbands die. Of those who gave birth to misshapen, stillborn children. Telling the stories of doctors and medics who would refuse to see the dying, because unlike car crashes, suicides, accidents, the Chernobyl deaths are the ones that last too long, that are otherworldly, where bodies are consuming growths rather than decaying flesh.
And it is still there.
2015
Svetlana Alexievich
2014
Patrick Modiano
2013
Alice Munro
2012
Mo Yan
2011
Tomas Tranströmer
2010
Mario Vargas Llosa
2009
Herta Müller
2008
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
2007
Doris Lessing
2006
Orhan Pamuk
2005
Harold Pinter
2004
Elfriede Jelinek
2003
J.M. Coetzee
2002
Imre Kertész
2001
V.S. Naipaul
2000
Gao Xingjian
1999
Günter Grass
1998
José Saramago
1997
Dario Fo
1996
Wislawa Szymborska
1995
Seamus Heaney
1994
Kenzaburo Oe
1993
Toni Morrison
1992
Derek Walcott
1991
Nadine Gordimer
1990
Octavio Paz
1989
Camilo José Cela
1988
Naguib Mahfouz
1987
Joseph Brodsky
1986
Wole Soyinka
1985
Claude Simon
1984
Jaroslav Seifert
1983
William Golding
1982
Gabriel García Márquez
1981
Elias Canetti
1980
Czesław Miłosz
1979
Odysseus Elytis
1978
Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977
Vicente Aleixandre
1976
Saul Bellow
1975
Eugenio Montale
1974
Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973
Patrick White
1972
Heinrich Böll
1971
Pablo Neruda
1970
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
1969
Samuel Beckett
1968
Yasunari Kawabata
1967
Miguel Ángel Asturias
1966
Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965
Mikhail Sholokhov
1964
Jean-Paul Sartre
1963
Giorgos Seferis
1962
John Steinbeck
1961
Ivo Andric
1960
Saint-John Perse
1959
Salvatore Quasimodo
1958
Boris Pasternak
1957
Albert Camus
1956
Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955
Halldór Laxness
1954
Ernest Hemingway
1953
Winston Churchill
1952
François Mauriac
1951
Pär Lagerkvist
1950
Bertrand Russell
1949
William Faulkner
1948
T.S. Eliot
1947
André Gide
1946
Hermann Hesse
1945
Gabriela Mistral
1944
Johannes V. Jensen
1943
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1942
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1941
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1940
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1939
Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938
Pearl Buck
1937
Roger Martin du Gard
1936
Eugene O'Neill
1935
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1934
Luigi Pirandello
1933
Ivan Bunin
1932
John Galsworthy
1931
Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930
Sinclair Lewis
1929
Thomas Mann
1928
Sigrid Undset
1927
Henri Bergson
1926
Grazia Deledda
1925
George Bernard Shaw
1924
Wladyslaw Reymont
1923
William Butler Yeats
1922
Jacinto Benavente
1921
Anatole France
1920
Knut Hamsun
1919
Carl Spitteler
1918
No prize awarded. The prize money for this year was allocated to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1917
Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916
Verner von Heidenstam
1915
Romain Rolland
1914
No prize awarded. The prize money for this year was allocated to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1913
Rabindranath Tagore
1912
Gerhart Hauptmann
1911
Maurice Maeterlinck
1910
Paul Heyse
1909
Selma Lagerlöf
1908
Rudolf Eucken
1907
Rudyard Kipling
1906
Giosuè Carducci
1905
Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904
Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902
Theodor Mommsen
1901
Sully Prudhomme
102/112
It's unfair to call this Alexievich's book. With the exception of the last two pages it is all transcripts of interviews with residents of Chernobyl (Alexievich's prompts are not even listed), as well as a couple of other related Russians. The book is powerful. The stories are hard.
Most especially hard are the tales of women who watched their husbands die. Of those who gave birth to misshapen, stillborn children. Telling the stories of doctors and medics who would refuse to see the dying, because unlike car crashes, suicides, accidents, the Chernobyl deaths are the ones that last too long, that are otherworldly, where bodies are consuming growths rather than decaying flesh.
And it is still there.
2015
Svetlana Alexievich
2014
Patrick Modiano
2013
Alice Munro
2012
Mo Yan
2011
Tomas Tranströmer
2010
Mario Vargas Llosa
2009
Herta Müller
2008
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
2007
Doris Lessing
2006
Orhan Pamuk
2005
Harold Pinter
2004
Elfriede Jelinek
2003
J.M. Coetzee
2002
Imre Kertész
2001
V.S. Naipaul
2000
Gao Xingjian
1999
Günter Grass
1998
José Saramago
1997
Dario Fo
1996
Wislawa Szymborska
1995
Seamus Heaney
1994
Kenzaburo Oe
1993
Toni Morrison
1992
Derek Walcott
1991
Nadine Gordimer
1990
Octavio Paz
1989
Camilo José Cela
1988
Naguib Mahfouz
1987
Joseph Brodsky
1986
Wole Soyinka
1985
Claude Simon
1984
Jaroslav Seifert
1983
William Golding
1982
Gabriel García Márquez
1981
Elias Canetti
1980
Czesław Miłosz
1979
Odysseus Elytis
1978
Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977
Vicente Aleixandre
1976
Saul Bellow
1975
Eugenio Montale
1974
Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973
Patrick White
1972
Heinrich Böll
1971
Pablo Neruda
1970
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
1969
Samuel Beckett
1968
Yasunari Kawabata
1967
Miguel Ángel Asturias
1966
Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965
Mikhail Sholokhov
1964
Jean-Paul Sartre
1963
Giorgos Seferis
1962
John Steinbeck
1961
Ivo Andric
1960
Saint-John Perse
1959
Salvatore Quasimodo
1958
Boris Pasternak
1957
Albert Camus
1956
Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955
Halldór Laxness
1954
Ernest Hemingway
1953
Winston Churchill
1952
François Mauriac
1951
Pär Lagerkvist
1950
Bertrand Russell
1949
William Faulkner
1948
T.S. Eliot
1947
André Gide
1946
Hermann Hesse
1945
Gabriela Mistral
1944
Johannes V. Jensen
1943
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1942
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1941
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1940
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1939
Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938
Pearl Buck
1937
Roger Martin du Gard
1936
Eugene O'Neill
1935
No prize awarded. 1/3 of the prize money for this year was allocated to the Main Fund, 2/3 to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1934
Luigi Pirandello
1933
Ivan Bunin
1932
John Galsworthy
1931
Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930
Sinclair Lewis
1929
Thomas Mann
1928
Sigrid Undset
1927
Henri Bergson
1926
Grazia Deledda
1925
George Bernard Shaw
1924
Wladyslaw Reymont
1923
William Butler Yeats
1922
Jacinto Benavente
1921
Anatole France
1920
Knut Hamsun
1919
Carl Spitteler
1918
No prize awarded. The prize money for this year was allocated to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1917
Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916
Verner von Heidenstam
1915
Romain Rolland
1914
No prize awarded. The prize money for this year was allocated to the Special Fund of the literature section.
1913
Rabindranath Tagore
1912
Gerhart Hauptmann
1911
Maurice Maeterlinck
1910
Paul Heyse
1909
Selma Lagerlöf
1908
Rudolf Eucken
1907
Rudyard Kipling
1906
Giosuè Carducci
1905
Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904
Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902
Theodor Mommsen
1901
Sully Prudhomme
102/112