Literature Nobel Laureates

Below are all the laureates since the year of my birth. I think I’ve read less than half of them, and some of them – like the Quasimodo guy from my yob – I’ve never even heard of. Also, I find it strange that so many of them are best known for writing drama. Except maybe for Marquez, none of them have given me one of those unforgettable literary moments we all cherish. Although a few of the ones predating 1959 have, like Pasternak, Laxness, Hemingway Mann and Lagerlöf.

Is any one of them a favourite of yours? What have you read? Why did you think it was wonderful? I’d really like to know!

• 2008 – Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
• 2007 – Doris Lessing
• 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
• 1965 – Mikhail Sholokhov
• 1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre
• 1963 – Giorgos Seferis
• 1962 – John Steinbeck
• 1961 – Ivo Andric
• 1960 – Saint-John Perse
• 1959 – Salvatore Quasimodo