Every laureate, with a representative book

Nobel Prize in Literature Winners

1901 to 2025

The year is the author’s Nobel Prize year. Each title represents the laureate’s work; the prize honors their whole body of work.

Winners by year

Newest first. The year links to everything published or awarded that year.

Nobel Prize in Literature Winners, newest first
Year Representative book and laureate
2025 Satantango by László Krasznahorkai
2024 The Vegetarian by Han Kang
2023 Septology by Jon Fosse
2022 The Years by Annie Ernaux
2021 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
2020 The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
2019 The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke
2018 Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
2017 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
2016 The Lyrics by Bob Dylan
2015 Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
2014 Missing Person by Patrick Modiano
2013 Dear Life by Alice Munro
2012 Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
2011 The Great Enigma by Tomas Tranströmer
2010 The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
2009 The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller
2008 Desert by J. M. G. Le Clézio
2007 The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
2006 My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
2005 The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
2004 The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
2003 Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
2002 Fatelessness by Imre Kertész
2001 A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
2000 Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
1999 The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
1998 Blindness by José Saramago
1997 Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo
1996 View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska
1995 Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
1994 A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe
1993 Beloved by Toni Morrison
1992 Omeros by Derek Walcott
1991 July's People by Nadine Gordimer
1990 The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz
1989 The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela
1988 Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
1987 Less Than One by Joseph Brodsky
1986 Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka
1985 The Flanders Road by Claude Simon
1984 The Plague Column by Jaroslav Seifert
1983 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
1982 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
1981 Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti
1980 The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz
1979 The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis
1978 The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Destruction or Love by Vicente Aleixandre
1976 Herzog by Saul Bellow
1975 Cuttlefish Bones by Eugenio Montale
1974 Aniara by Harry Martinson
1974 Return to Ithaca by Eyvind Johnson
1973 Voss by Patrick White
1972 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll
1971 Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
1970 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1969 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
1968 Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
1967 Men of Maize by Miguel Ángel Asturias
1966 O the Chimneys by Nelly Sachs
1966 Only Yesterday by Shmuel Agnon
1965 And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
1964 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
1963 Mythistorema by Giorgos Seferis
1962 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1961 The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
1960 Anabasis by Saint-John Perse
1959 And Suddenly It's Evening by Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
1957 The Stranger by Albert Camus
1956 Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 Independent People by Halldór Laxness
1954 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1953 The Second World War by Winston Churchill
1952 Thérèse Desqueyroux by François Mauriac
1951 Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist
1950 A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
1949 The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
1948 Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
1947 The Immoralist by André Gide
1946 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
1945 Desolation by Gabriela Mistral
1944 The Long Journey by Johannes V. Jensen
1943 No Award
1942 No Award
1941 No Award
1940 No Award
1939 Meek Heritage by Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
1937 The Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard
1936 Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill
1935 No Award
1934 Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
1933 The Life of Arseniev by Ivan Bunin
1932 The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
1931 Fridolin's Songs by Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
1929 Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
1928 Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
1927 Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson
1926 Reeds in the Wind by Grazia Deledda
1925 Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
1924 The Peasants by Władysław Reymont
1923 The Tower by William Butler Yeats
1922 The Bonds of Interest by Jacinto Benavente
1921 Penguin Island by Anatole France
1920 Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
1919 Olympian Spring by Carl Spitteler
1918 No Award
1917 Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan
1917 The Pilgrim Kamanita by Karl Gjellerup
1916 The Charles Men by Verner von Heidenstam
1915 Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland
1914 No Award
1913 Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
1912 The Weavers by Gerhart Hauptmann
1911 The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck
1910 L'Arrabbiata by Paul Heyse
1909 The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf
1908 The Meaning and Value of Life by Rudolf Eucken
1907 Kim by Rudyard Kipling
1906 Barbarian Odes by Giosuè Carducci
1905 Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 The Great Galeoto by José Echegaray
1904 Mirèio by Frédéric Mistral
1903 Synnøve Solbakken by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902 The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen
1901 Stanzas and Poems by Sully Prudhomme

About the Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature has honored a writer's entire body of work since 1901 rather than a single title, so this list pairs every laureate with one representative book. It runs from Sully Prudhomme in 1901 to László Krasznahorkai in 2025 and includes the seven years when the Swedish Academy withheld the award.

Awarded by
The Swedish Academy
First awarded
1901
Country
Sweden
Winner receives
11 million Swedish kronor

When it is announced

Announced on a Thursday in early October, during Nobel week. See the full announcement calendar.

How to enter

There is no public entry. Nominations come only from invited nominators, such as academy members, literature professors and past laureates, and close at the end of January.

Official prize site. Checked August 2026. Dates move year to year, so confirm on the official site before entering.