Nobel Prize for Literature Updated

The winners for 2018 and 2019

I wanted to take a moment and review which Nobel-awarded authors I’d read, and what I'd read by them. Also, I promised I’d update this in my last post, since the original was put online all the way back in 2012, when I’d read only 20% of the Nobel laureates… That has changed.

So, as of today's announcement, I have read works by:

Sully Prudhomme (1901). I’ve read his ‘Selected Poems’.

Theodor Mommsen (1902). I’ve read ‘A History of Rome Under the Emperors’.

Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1903).  I’ve read ‘Poems and Songs’.

Frederic Mistral (1904). I’ve read ‘Mireio’.

Jose Echegaray (1904). I’ve read ‘The Great Galeoto’.

Henry Sienkiewicz (1905). I’ve read ‘Quo Vadis’.

Giosue Carducci (1906). I’ve read ‘Barbarian Odes’.

Rudyard Kipling (1907). I’ve read ‘Just-So Stories,’ ‘Kim,’ and selected poetry.

Rudolph Eucken (1908). I’ve read his ‘Collected Essays’.

Selma Lagerlof (1909). I’ve read ‘The Wonderful Adventures of Nils’.

Paul Von Heyse (1910). I’ve read ‘Barbarossa and Other Tales’.

Maurice Maeterlinck (1911). I’ve read ‘The Blue Bird’.

Gerhart Hauptman (1912). I’ve read ‘Before Daybreak’, ‘The Weavers’ and ‘The Beaver Coat’.

Rabindranath Tagore (1913). I’ve read his essays ‘Nationalism’ and his poetry collection ‘Gitanjali’.

Romain Rolland (1915). I’ve read ‘Jean-Christophe’.

Verner von Heidenstam (1916). I’ve read ‘The Charles Men’.

Karl Gjellerup (1917). I’ve read ‘The Pilgrim Kamanita’.

Carl Spitteler (1919). I’ve read his ‘Selected Poems’.

Knut Hamsun (1920). I’ve read ‘Hunger’ and intend to read ‘Growth of the Soil’.

Anatole France (1921). I’ve read ‘The Gods Will Have Blood’.

Jacinto Benavente (1922). I’ve read ‘The Bonds of Interest’.

William Butler Yeats (1923). I’ve read ‘The Tower’.

Wladyslaw Reymont (1924). I’ve read ‘The Peasants: Autumn’.

George Bernard Shaw (1925). I’ve read ‘Pygmalion’, ‘St. Joan’ and ‘Major Barbara’.

Grazia Deledda (1926). I’ve read ‘Reeds in the Wind’.

Henri Bergson (1927). I’ve read ‘Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic’.

Sinclair Lewis (1930). I’ve read ‘Main Street’.

Erik Karlfeldt (1931). I’ve read ‘Arcadia Borealis’.

Ivan Bunin (1933). I’ve read ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories’.

Luigi Pirandello (1934) I’ve read ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’.

Eugene O’Neil (1936). I’ve read ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’.

Roger Martin du Gard (1937). I’ve read ‘The Thibaults’.

Frans Sillanpaa (1939). I’ve read ‘People in the Summer Night’.

Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944). I’ve read ‘The Fall of the King’.

Gabriela Mistral (1945). I’ve read ‘Madwomen’.

Herman Hesse (1946). I’ve read ‘Siddhartha’.

Andre Gide (1947). I’ve read ‘The Immoralist’.

T.S. Eliot (1948). I’ve read ‘Prufrock and Other Observations’, ‘Ash Wednesday’, ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’.

William Faulkner (1949). I’ve read ‘The Sound and the Fury’, ‘As I lay Dying’, ‘Light in August’ and ‘Go Down Moses’ and the short story ‘A Rose for Emily’.

Bertrand Russell (1950). I’ve read ‘A History of Western Philosophy’ and the essay ‘Why I Am Not a Christian’. I intend to read ‘The Philosophy of Leibniz’.

Par Lagerkvist (1951). I’ve read ‘Barabbas’.

Winston Churchill (1953). I’ve read his speeches and intend to read ‘The Second World War’.

Ernest Hemingway (1954). I’ve read ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and the short story ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ and intend to read ‘A Farewell to Arms’.

Halldor Laxness (1955). I’ve read ‘Independent People’.

Juan Ramon Jimenez (1956). I’ve read ‘Platero and I’.

Albert Camus (1957). I’ve read ‘The Stranger’, ‘The Fall’ and ‘The Plague’, and the essay collections ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ and ‘The Rebel’.

Boris Pasternak (1958). I’ve read ‘My Sister, Life’.

Salvatore Quasimodo (1959). I’ve read ‘The Incomparable Earth’.

Saint-John Perse (1960). I’ve read his ‘Eloges’.

Ivo Andric (1961). I’ve read ‘The Bridge on the Drina’.

John Steinbeck (1962). I’ve read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1964). I’ve read ‘Being and Nothingness’, ‘Nausea’, the plays ‘No Exit’, ‘The Flies’ ‘Dirty Hands’ and ‘The Respectful Prostitute’, the short story ‘The Wall’, and the essays ‘Portrait of an Anti-Semite’, ‘Self-Deception’, ‘Marxism and Existentialism’ and ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’.

Giorgos Seferis (1963). I’ve read his ‘Logbook II’.

Nelly Sachs (1966). I’ve read ‘O the Chimneys’.

Miguel Asturias (1967). I’ve read ‘El Senor Presidente’.

Kawabata Yasunari (1968). I’ve read ‘The Sound of the Mountain’.

Samuel Beckett (1969). I’ve read ‘Waiting for Godot’ and the trilogy ‘Molloy’, ‘Malone Dies’ and ‘The Unnamable’.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1970). I’ve read ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’.

Pablo Neruda (1971). I’ve read ‘Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair’ and ‘The Yellow Heart’.

Harry Martinson (1974). I’ve read ‘Chickweed Wintergreen’.

Eyvind Johnson (1974). I’ve read ‘The Days of His Grace’.

Eugenio Montale (1975). I’ve read ‘Cuttlefish Bones’ and ‘The Occasions’.

Saul Bellow (1976). I’ve read ‘The Adventures of Augie March’ and intend to read ‘Herzog’ and ‘Henderson the Rain King’.

Vicente Aleixandre (1977). I’ve read ‘A Longing for the Light’.

Odysseas Elytis (1979). I’ve read ‘The Axion Esti’.

Czeslaw Milosz (1980). I’ve read his ‘Selected Poems’.

Elias Canetti (1981). I’ve read ‘Crowds and Power’.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982). I’ve read ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, the short story ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ and the essay ‘Words Are in a Hurry, Get Out of the Way’.

William Golding (1983). I’ve read ‘Lord of the Flies’.

Jaroslav Seifert (1984). I’ve read his ‘Selected Poems’.

Claude Simon (1985). I’ve read ‘The Georgics’.

Wole Soyinka (1986). I’ve read ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’.

Joseph Brodsky (1987). I’ve read ‘To Urania’.

Naguib Mahfouz (1988). I’ve read ‘Children of Gebelawi’.

Camilo Jose Cela (1989). I’ve read ‘The Family of Pascal Duarte’.

Octavio Paz (1990). I’ve read ‘Eagle or Sun?’ and ‘A Tale of Two Gardens’.

Nadine Gordimer (1991). I’ve read ‘The Conservationist’.

Derek Walcott (1992). I’ve read ‘Omeros’.

Toni Morrison (1993). I’ve read ‘Beloved’ and intend to read ‘Song of Solomon’.

Kenzaburo Oe (1994). I’ve read ‘Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness’.

Seamus Heaney (1995). I’ve read ‘North’.

Wislawa Szymborska (1996). I’ve read ‘View with a Grain of Sand’.

Dario Fo (1997). I’ve read ‘Accidental Death of an Anarchist’.

Gao Xingjian (2000). I’ve read ‘Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather’.

V.S. Naipaul (2001). I’ve read ‘A Bend in the River’ and intend to read ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’.

Imre Kertesz (2002). I’ve read ‘Kaddish for an Unborn Child’.

J.M. Coetzee (2003). I’ve read ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’.

Elfriede Jelinek (2004). I’ve read ‘The Piano Teacher’.

Harold Pinter (2005). I’ve read ‘Betrayal’.

Tomas Transtromer (2011). I’ve read ‘The Great Enigma’.

Mo Yan (2012). I’ve read ‘Life and Death are Wearing Me Out’.

Alice Munro (2013). I’ve read ‘Dear Life’.

Patrick Modiano (2014). I’ve read ‘Missing Person’.

Svetlana Alexievich (2015). I’ve read ‘Voices from Chernobyl’.

Bob Dylan (2016). I’ve…read? ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’, ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, ‘Blonde on Blonde’, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, ‘Blood on the Tracks’, ‘Time Out of Mind’, ‘Modern Times’, ‘Love and Theft’, ‘Desire’, ‘The Basement Tapes’, ‘John Wesley Harding’, and ‘Nashville Skyline’.

Kazuo Ishiguro (2017). I’ve read ‘Never Let Me Go’.

So I’m familiar with 96 of 117, or 82%. I’d like to read them all (italics for the works I own):

Henrik Pontoppidan (1917). I am currently reading ‘Lucky Per’.

Sigrid Undset (1928). I want to read ‘Kristin Lavransdatter’.

Thomas Mann (1929). I want to read ‘Buddenbrooks’ and ‘The Magic Mountain’.

John Galsworthy (1932). I want to read ‘The Forsyte Saga’.

Pearl S. Buck (1938). I want to read ‘The Good Earth’.

Francois Mauriac (1952). I want to read ‘The Desert of Love’.

Mikhail Sholokhov (1965). I want to read ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’.

Shmuel Agnon (1966). I want to read ‘To This Day’.

Heinrich Boll (1972). I want to read ‘Billiards at Half-Past Nine’.

Patrick White (1973). I want to read ‘Voss’.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978). I want to read ‘A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories’.

Jose Saramago (1998). I want to read ‘Blindness’.

Gunter Grass (1999). I want to read ‘The Tin Drum’.

Orhan Pamuk (2006). I want to read ‘My Name is Red’.

Doris Lessing (2007). I want to read ‘The Golden Notebook’.

J.M.G. Le Clezio (2008). I want to read ‘The Interrogation’.

Herta Muller (2009). I want to read ‘The Hunger Angel’.

Mario Vargas Llosa (2010). I want to read ‘The War of the End of the World’.

Maryse Conde** (2018). I want to read ‘Segu’. ** Winner of the “New Academy Prize” when the Nobel Committee dropped the ball. So I count her.

Olga Tokarczuk (2018). I want to read ‘Flights’.

Peter Handke (2019). I want to read ‘Short Letter, Long Farewell’.