I have a long-term goal to try to read at least something of everyone that has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (120 persons so far).
Here are some statistics about what I read apart from Nobel laureates. I also used to keep a Swedish blog called Du är vad du läser ("You are What You Read") about books in general.
I had read something before the prize was announced | 10 | 8% |
I have read something | 75 | 62% |
I have a book | 10 | 8% |
Nothing, yet | 25 | 21% |
Total read | 85 | 71% |
Total unread | 35 | 29% |
Total | 120 |
Year | Country | Name | Born-Dead | Age awarded | Years winner | Average age |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1901 | Sully Prudhomme | 1839-1907 | 62 | 6 | 62 | |
1902 | Theodor Mommsen | 1817-1903 | 85 | 1 | 73 | |
1903 | Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson | 1832-1910 | 71 | 7 | 72 | |
1904 | Frédéric Mistral | 1830-1914 | 74 | 10 | 73 | |
1904 | José Echegaray | 1833-1916 | 71 | 12 | 72 | |
1905 | Henryk Sienkiewicz | 1846-1916 | 59 | 11 | 70 | |
1906 | Giosuè Carducci | 1835-1907 | 71 | 1 | 70 | |
1907 | Rudyard Kipling | 1865-1936 | 42 | 29 | 66 | |
1908 | Rudolf Eucken | 1846-1926 | 62 | 18 | 66 | |
1909 | Selma Lagerlöf | 1858-1940 | 51 | 31 | 64 | |
1910 | Paul Heyse | 1830-1914 | 80 | 4 | 66 | |
1911 | Maurice Maeterlinck | 1862-1949 | 49 | 38 | 64 | |
1912 | Gerhart Hauptmann | 1862-1946 | 50 | 34 | 63 | |
1913 | Rabindranath Tagore | 1861-1941 | 52 | 28 | 62 | |
1915 | Romain Rolland | 1866-1944 | 49 | 29 | 61 | |
1916 | Verner von Heidenstam | 1859-1940 | 57 | 24 | 61 | |
1917 | Karl Gjellerup | 1857-1919 | 60 | 2 | 61 | |
1917 | Henrik Pontoppidan | 1857-1943 | 60 | 26 | 61 | |
1919 | Carl Spitteler | 1845-1924 | 74 | 5 | 62 | |
1920 | Knut Hamsun | 1859-1952 | 61 | 32 | 62 | |
1921 | Anatole France | 1844-1924 | 77 | 3 | 62 | |
1922 | Jacinto Benavente | 1866-1954 | 56 | 32 | 62 | |
1923 | William Butler Yeats | 1865-1939 | 58 | 16 | 62 | |
1924 | Wladyslaw Reymont | 1867-1925 | 57 | 1 | 62 | |
1925 | George Bernard Shaw | 1856-1950 | 69 | 25 | 62 | |
1926 | Grazia Deledda | 1871-1936 | 55 | 10 | 62 | |
1927 | Henri Bergson | 1859-1927 | 68 | 0 | 62 | |
1928 | Sigrid Undset | 1882-1949 | 46 | 21 | 61 | |
1929 | Thomas Mann | 1875-1955 | 54 | 26 | 61 | |
1930 | Sinclair Lewis | 1885-1951 | 45 | 21 | 60 | |
1931 | Erik Axel Karlfeldt | 1864-1931 | 67 | 0 | 61 | |
1932 | John Galsworthy | 1867-1933 | 65 | 1 | 61 | |
1933 | Ivan Bunin | 1870-1953 | 63 | 20 | 61 | |
1934 | Luigi Pirandello | 1867-1936 | 67 | 2 | 61 | |
1936 | Eugene O'Neill | 1888-1953 | 48 | 17 | 61 | |
1937 | Roger Martin du Gard | 1881-1958 | 56 | 21 | 60 | |
1938 | Pearl Buck | 1892-1973 | 46 | 35 | 60 | |
1939 | Frans Eemil Sillanpää | 1888-1964 | 51 | 25 | 60 | |
1944 | Johannes V. Jensen | 1873-1950 | 71 | 6 | 60 | |
1945 | Gabriela Mistral | 1889-1957 | 56 | 12 | 60 | |
1946 | Hermann Hesse | 1877-1962 | 69 | 16 | 60 | |
1947 | André Gide | 1869-1951 | 78 | 4 | 61 | |
1948 | Thomas Stearns Eliot | 1888-1965 | 60 | 17 | 60 | |
1949 | William Faulkner | 1897-1962 | 52 | 13 | 60 | |
1950 | Bertrand Russell | 1872-1970 | 78 | 20 | 61 | |
1951 | Pär Lagerkvist | 1891-1974 | 60 | 23 | 61 | |
1952 | François Mauriac | 1885-1970 | 67 | 18 | 61 | |
1953 | Winston Churchill | 1874-1965 | 79 | 12 | 61 | |
1954 | Ernest Hemingway | 1899-1961 | 55 | 7 | 61 | |
1955 | Halldór Kiljan Laxness | 1902-1998 | 53 | 43 | 61 | |
1956 | Juan Ramón Jiménez | 1881-1958 | 75 | 2 | 61 | |
1957 | Albert Camus | 1913-1960 | 44 | 3 | 61 | |
1958 | Boris Pasternak | 1890-1960 | 68 | 2 | 61 | |
1959 | Salvatore Quasimodo | 1901-1968 | 58 | 9 | 61 | |
1960 | Saint-John Perse | 1887-1975 | 73 | 15 | 61 | |
1961 | Ivo Andric | 1892-1975 | 69 | 14 | 61 | |
1962 | John Steinbeck | 1902-1968 | 60 | 6 | 61 | |
1963 | Giorgos Seferis | 1900-1971 | 63 | 8 | 61 | |
1964 | Jean-Paul Sartre | 1905-1980 | 59 | 16 | 61 | |
1965 | Michail Sholokhov | 1905-1984 | 60 | 19 | 61 | |
1966 | Samuel Agnon | 1888-1970 | 78 | 4 | 61 | |
1966 | Nelly Sachs | 1891-1970 | 75 | 4 | 62 | |
1967 | Miguel Ángel Asturias | 1899-1974 | 68 | 7 | 62 | |
1968 | Yasunari Kawabata | 1899-1972 | 69 | 4 | 62 | |
1969 | Samuel Beckett | 1906-1989 | 63 | 20 | 62 | |
1970 | Alexander Solzhenitsyn | 1918-2008 | 52 | 38 | 62 | |
1971 | Pablo Neruda | 1904-1973 | 67 | 2 | 62 | |
1972 | Heinrich Böll | 1917-1985 | 55 | 13 | 62 | |
1973 | Patrick White | 1912-1990 | 61 | 17 | 62 | |
1974 | Eyvind Johnson | 1900-1976 | 74 | 2 | 62 | |
1974 | Harry Martinson | 1904-1978 | 70 | 4 | 62 | |
1975 | Eugenio Montale | 1896-1981 | 79 | 6 | 62 | |
1976 | Saul Bellow | 1915-2005 | 61 | 29 | 62 | |
1977 | Vicente Aleixandre | 1898-1984 | 79 | 7 | 62 | |
1978 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | 1902-1991 | 76 | 13 | 62 | |
1979 | Odysseus Elytis | 1911-1996 | 68 | 17 | 63 | |
1980 | Czeslaw Milosz | 1911-2004 | 69 | 24 | 63 | |
1981 | Elias Canetti | 1905-1994 | 76 | 13 | 63 | |
1982 | Gabriel García Márquez | 1928-2014 | 54 | 32 | 63 | |
1983 | William Golding | 1911-1993 | 72 | 10 | 63 | |
1984 | Jaroslav Seifert | 1901-1986 | 83 | 2 | 63 | |
1985 | Claude Simon | 1913-2005 | 72 | 20 | 63 | |
1986 | Wole Soyinka | 1934- | 52 | 38+ | 63 | |
1987 | Joseph Brodsky | 1940-1996 | 47 | 9 | 63 | |
1988 | Naguib Mahfouz | 1911-2006 | 77 | 18 | 63 | |
1989 | Camilo José Cela | 1916-2002 | 73 | 13 | 63 | |
1990 | Octavio Paz | 1914-1998 | 76 | 8 | 63 | |
1991 | Nadine Gordimer | 1923-2014 | 68 | 23 | 63 | |
1992 | Derek Walcott | 1930-2017 | 62 | 25 | 63 | |
1993 | Toni Morrison | 1931-2019 | 62 | 26 | 63 | |
1994 | Kenzaburo Oe | 1935-2023 | 59 | 29 | 63 | |
1995 | Seamus Heaney | 1939-2013 | 56 | 18 | 63 | |
1996 | Wislawa Szymborska | 1923-2012 | 73 | 16 | 63 | |
1997 | Dario Fo | 1926-2016 | 71 | 19 | 63 | |
1998 | José Saramago | 1922-2010 | 76 | 12 | 63 | |
1999 | Günter Grass | 1927-2015 | 72 | 16 | 63 | |
2000 | Gao Xingjian | 1940- | 60 | 24+ | 63 | |
2001 | V. S. Naipaul | 1932-2018 | 69 | 17 | 63 | |
2002 | Imre Kertész | 1929-2016 | 73 | 14 | 64 | |
2003 | John Maxwell Coetzee | 1940- | 63 | 21+ | 64 | |
2004 | Elfriede Jelinek | 1946- | 58 | 20+ | 63 | |
2005 | Harold Pinter | 1930-2008 | 75 | 3 | 64 | |
2006 | Orhan Pamuk | 1952- | 54 | 18+ | 64 | |
2007 | Doris Lessing | 1919-2013 | 88 | 6 | 64 | |
2008 | Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio | 1940- | 68 | 16+ | 64 | |
2009 | Herta Müller | 1953- | 56 | 15+ | 64 | |
2010 | Mario Vargas Llosa | 1936- | 74 | 14+ | 64 | |
2011 | Tomas Tranströmer | 1931-2015 | 80 | 4 | 64 | |
2012 | Mo Yan | 1955- | 57 | 12+ | 64 | |
2013 | Alice Munro | 1931-2024 | 82 | 11 | 64 | |
2014 | Patrick Modiano | 1945- | 69 | 10+ | 64 | |
2015 | Svetlana Aleksijevitj | 1948- | 67 | 9+ | 64 | |
2016 | Bob Dylan | 1941- | 75 | 8+ | 64 | |
2017 | Kazuo Ishiguro | 1954- | 63 | 7+ | 64 | |
2018 | Olga Tokarczuk | 1962- | 56 | 6+ | 64 | |
2019 | Peter Handke | 1942- | 77 | 5+ | 64 | |
2020 | Louise Glück | 1943-2023 | 77 | 3 | 64 | |
2021 | Abdulrazak Gurnah | 1948- | 73 | 3+ | 64 | |
2022 | Annie Ernaux | 1940- | 82 | 2+ | 65 | |
2023 | Jon Fosse | 1959- | 64 | 1+ | 65 |
Youngest winner: Rudyard Kipling (42 years)
Oldest winner: Doris Lessing (88 years)
Longest time as a laureate: Halldór Kiljan Laxness (43 years)