Nobel Prize Winners

Nobel Prize for Literature

On November 27, 1895 Alfred Nobel gave the largest share of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes. As described in his will, one part was dedicated to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."

The 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Norwegian author Jon Fosse for his "innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable," the Swedish Academy announced. "His immense oeuvre written in Norwegian Nynorsk and spanning a variety of genres consists of a wealth of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, children's books and translations. While he is today one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, he has also become increasingly recognised for his prose...

The 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Annie Ernaux for the "clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory." She is considered by many to be France’s most important literary voice.

The 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. Gurnah becomes first black African writer in 35 years to win prestigious award. His fourth novel, Paradise, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994.

The 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Louise Glück, cited by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." Glück, who was the U.S. poet laureate 2003-2004, is the author of more than a dozen books of poems and a collection of essays. She won the National Book Award for Virtuous Night (2014), the Pulitzer Prize for The Wild Iris (1992), the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Triumph of Achilles (1985) and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poems: 1962-2012.

The 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Peter Handke. Renowned Austrian author Peter Handke's award-winning writing crosses many genres, from novels and essays to plays and screenplays. Known for his sharp eye and commanding prose, Handke is the author of A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, and Don Juan, among other acclaimed works.

The 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Olga Tokarczuk. One of Poland's most celebrated authors, Olga Tokarczuk received the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Flights.

The 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro..The British author takes the award for his "novels of great emotional force." Ishiguro was praised by the Swedish Academy for novels which “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world” and were driven by a “great emotional force."

The 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan.

 

Staff Pick Badge
Septology By Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Translator) Cover Image
By Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Translator)
$22.95
ISBN: 9781945492754
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Transit Books - October 31st, 2023

"In common with his great precursor in Nynorsk literature Tarjei Vesaas, Fosse combines strong local ties, both linguistic and geographic, with modernist artistic techniques. He includes in his Wahlverwandschaften such names as Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard and Georg Trakl. While Fosse shares the negative outlook of his predecessors, his particular gnostic vision cannot be said to result in a nihilistic contempt of the world. Indeed, there is great warmth and humour in his work, and a naïve vulnerability to his stark images of human experience."

Fosse, who receives 11 million Swedish krona (about $990,000), has written more than 40 plays, novels, short stories, children's books, poetry, and essays. The Academy said that Fosse's "magnum opus in prose" is Septology, which he completed in 2021 and was published in several volumes. "Extending to 1,250 pages, the novel is written in the form of a monologue in which an elderly artist speaks to himself as another person. The work progresses seemingly endlessly and without sentence breaks, but is formally held together by repetitions, recurring themes and a fixed time span of seven days. Each of its parts opens with the same phrase and concludes with the same prayer to God." A New Name: Septology VI-VII was a finalist last year for the National Book Awards, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, and the International Booker Prize. It, as well as the complete Septology, was published in the U.S. by Transit Books. (Transit Books is publishing Fosse's A Shining this month.)

Another key work is Trilogy (2016), "a cruel saga of love and violence with strong Biblical allusions, [which] is set in the barren coastal landscape where almost all of Fosse's fiction takes place." It was published in the U.S. by Dalkey Archive Press.

Fosse's debut novel Red, Black (1983) is, the Academy said, "as rebellious as it was emotionally raw, broached the theme of suicide and, in many ways, set the tone for his later work."


Do What They Say or Else By Annie Ernaux, Christopher Beach (Translated by), Carrie Noland (Translated by) Cover Image
By Annie Ernaux, Christopher Beach (Translated by), Carrie Noland (Translated by)
$17.95
ISBN: 9781496228000
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: University of Nebraska Press - October 1st, 2022

Paradise: By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 By Abdulrazak Gurnah Cover Image
$22.95
ISBN: 9781565841635
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: New Press - May 1st, 1995

American Originality: Essays on Poetry By Louise Glück Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780374537463
Availability: Usually Arrives at Kepler's in 3-14 Days
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - April 3rd, 2018

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story (FSG Classics) By Peter Handke, Ralph Manheim (Translated by), Jeffrey Eugenides (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Peter Handke, Ralph Manheim (Translated by), Jeffrey Eugenides (Introduction by)
$17.00
ISBN: 9780374533649
Availability: Usually Arrives at Kepler's in 3-14 Days
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - October 30th, 2012

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel By Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translated by) Cover Image
By Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translated by)
$18.00
ISBN: 9780525541349
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Riverhead Books - August 11th, 2020

The Remains of the Day: Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (Vintage International) By Kazuo Ishiguro Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780679731726
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Vintage - September 12th, 1990

Never Let Me Go (Vintage International) By Kazuo Ishiguro Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781400078776
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Vintage - March 14th, 2006

A Pale View of Hills (Vintage International) By Kazuo Ishiguro Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780679722670
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Vintage - September 12th, 1990

When We Were Orphans: A Novel (Vintage International) By Kazuo Ishiguro Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780375724404
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Vintage - October 30th, 2001

An Artist of the Floating World (Vintage International) By Kazuo Ishiguro Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9780679722663
Availability: In Stock at Kepler's Now
Published: Vintage - September 19th, 1989