Nobel Prize

Writers recognised by the Nobel Prize in Literature.

People in Nobel Prize

32 profiles

Writer

Abdulrazak Gurnah

Writing novels about colonialism, displacement and the lives of people caught between cultures.

Writer

Han Kang

Writing The Vegetarian and Human Acts, exploring violence, memory and human vulnerability.

Writer

Naguib Mahfouz

Writing the Cairo Trilogy and becoming the first Arabic-language Nobel literature laureate.

Writer

Kazuo Ishiguro

Writing The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.

Writer

Orhan Pamuk

Writing My Name Is Red and exploring Istanbul’s layered identities.

Writer

José Saramago

Writing philosophical novels including Blindness and winning the 1998 literature Nobel.

Writer

Mario Vargas Llosa

Writing major Latin American novels and winning the 2010 literature Nobel.

Poet

Pablo Neruda

Writing Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and the epic Canto General.

Poet

Gabriela Mistral

Becoming the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Poet

Octavio Paz

Writing The Labyrinth of Solitude and the long poem Sunstone.

Writer

Alice Munro

Turning small-town lives into intricate short stories with the scope of novels.

Novelist

Doris Lessing

Writing The Golden Notebook and fiction about women, politics and social division.

Novelist

Nadine Gordimer

Writing novels that exposed apartheid’s effects on private lives.

Novelist

J. M. Coetzee

Writing Waiting for the Barbarians and the Booker-winning novels Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace.

Novelist

V. S. Naipaul

Writing A House for Mr Biswas and searching accounts of colonial and postcolonial life.

Novelist

Mo Yan

Writing Red Sorghum and novels blending Chinese rural life, history and fantastical storytelling.

Writer

Gao Xingjian

Writing Soul Mountain and experimental drama that crossed Chinese and European traditions.

Novelist

Kenzaburō Ōe

Writing A Personal Matter and fiction confronting war, disability and responsibility.

Novelist

Yasunari Kawabata

Writing Snow Country and becoming Japan’s first Nobel laureate in literature.

Poet

Wisława Szymborska

Writing precise, ironic poems that find large questions in ordinary situations.

Poet

Czesław Miłosz

Writing The Captive Mind and poetry shaped by war, exile and moral reflection.

Novelist

Olga Tokarczuk

Writing Flights and The Books of Jacob, novels that cross borders of history and identity.

Novelist

Herta Müller

Writing about surveillance, displacement and daily life under dictatorship.

Novelist

Patrick Modiano

Writing novels that reconstruct lost identities and memories of occupied Paris.

Writer

Annie Ernaux

Writing The Years and autobiographical books connecting private memory with class and social history.

Playwright

Jon Fosse

Writing spare plays and the novel sequence Septology in Norwegian Nynorsk.

Poet

Louise Glück

Writing The Wild Iris and intimate poetry shaped by myth, family and loss.

Writer

Svetlana Alexievich

Creating books from eyewitness voices about war, Chernobyl and the Soviet aftermath.

Novelist

Selma Lagerlöf

Writing The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and becoming the first woman to win the literature Nobel.

Novelist

Sigrid Undset

Writing Kristin Lavransdatter, an expansive portrait of a woman’s life in medieval Norway.

Novelist

Grazia Deledda

Bringing Sardinian lives and moral conflicts into internationally recognised fiction.

Playwright

Luigi Pirandello

Writing Six Characters in Search of an Author and plays that question identity and reality.