The monetary award is a share of the interest on the endowment made by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, which is held in trust by the Nobel Foundation. Yes, the one who invented dynamite. The prize carries a financial prize of 10 million Swedish kronor, that's about £817,000. Very handy.
2011 Winner Tomas Tranströmer
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 was awarded to Tomas Tranströmer "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
2010 Winner Mario Vargas Llosa
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".
2009 Winner Herta Müller
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 was awarded to Herta Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".
2008 Winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".
Visionary Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize Literature 2007
“that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”
Doris Lessing is one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of our times. She has been awarded the David Cohen Memorial Prize for British Literature, Spain's Prince of Asturia Prize and Prix Catalunya, and the S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Aw rd for a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature to name but a fewOn December 10th, 2007, perhaps the biggest accolade of all, The Nobel Prize for Literature.
Nobel Prize for Literature 1901- 2007
* 2007- Doris Lessing- Lessing- Retro Life Feature
*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 - Czeslaw Milosz
* 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 - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
* 1969 - Samuel Beckett
* 1968 - Yasunari Kawabata
* 1967 - Miguel Angel Asturias
* 1966 - Shmuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
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* 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
* 1942 - No Prize
* 1941 - No Prize
* 1940 - No Prize
* 1939 - Frans Eemil Sillanpää
* 1938 - Pearl Buck
* 1937 - Roger Martin du Gard
* 1936 - Eugene O'Neill
* 1935 - No Prize
* 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
* 1917 - Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
* 1916 - Verner von Heidenstam
* 1915 - Romain Rolland
* 1914 - No Prize
* 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
