Looking for a Classic?

Summer can be a great time to get caught up on your reading. But where to start? For some, it may be those latest summer blockbusters (check out our summer catalog for those). For others, it's a great classic. For the next few weeks, we'll post lists of winners for some of the major literary awards. Let's start with the Nobel Prize for Fiction.


The Nobel Prize for Fiction is presented every December to one author for his or her entire body of work. The award is presented by the King of Sweden. The author's country is in parenthesis. In years not listed, no awards were given.

2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
2009: Herta Muller (Germany)
2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France & Mauritius)
2007: Doris Lessing (United Kingdom)
2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
2005: Harold Pinter (United Kingdom)
2004: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)
2003: J.M. Coetzee (South Africa)
2002: Imre Kertesz (Hungary)
2001: V.S. Naipaul (United Kingdom)
2000: Gao Xingjian (France)
1999: Gunter Grass (Germany)
1998: Jose Saramago (Portugal)
1997: Dario Fo (Italy)
1996: Wislawa Szymborska (Poland)
1995: Seamus Heaney (Ireland)
1994: Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
1993: Toni Morrison (United States)
1992: Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia)
1991: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
1990: Octavio Paz (Mexico)
1989: Camilo Jose Cela (Spain)
1988: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
1987: Joseph Brodsky (United States)
1986: Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
1985: Claude Simon (France)
1984: Jaroslav Seifert (Czechoslovakia)
1983: William Golding (United Kingdom)
1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
1981: Elias Canetti (United Kingdom)
1980: Czeslaw Milosz (Poland and United States)
1979: Odysseus Elytis (Greece)
1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (United States)
1977: Vicente Aleixandre (Spain)
1976: Saul Bellow (United States)
1975: Eugenio Montale (Italy)
1974: Eyvind Johnson (Sweden)
1974: Harry Martinson (Sweden)
1973: Patrick White (Australia)
1972: Heinrich Boll (Germany)
1971: Pablo Neruda (Chile)
1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (USSR)
1969: Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
1968: Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
1967: Miguel Angel Asturias (Guatemala)
1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Israel)
1966: Nelly Sachs (Sweden)
1965: Mikhail Sholokhov (USSR)
1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (France)
1963: Giorgos Seferis (Greece)
1962: John Steinbeck (United States)
1961: Ivo Andric (Yugoslavia)
1960: St.-John Perse (France)
1959: Salvatore Quasimodo (Italy)
1958: Boris Pasternak (USSR)
1957: Albert Camus (France)
1956: Juan Ramon Jiminez (Spain)
1955: Halldor Kiljan Laxness (Iceland)
1954: Ernest Hemingway (United States)
1953: Winston Churchill (United Kingdom)
1952: Francois Mauriac (France)
1951: Par Lagerkvist (Sweden)
1950: Bertrand Russell (United Kingdom)
1949: William Faulkner (United States)
1948: T.S. Eliot (United Kingdom)
1947: Andre Gide (France)
1946: Hermann Hesse (Switzerland)
1945: Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
1944: Johannes V. Jensen (Denmark)
1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpaa (Finland)
1938: Pearl Buck (United States)
1937: Roger Martin du Gard (France)
1936: Eugene O'Neill (United States)
1934: Luigi Pirandello (Italy)
1933: Ivan Bunin (Russia)
1932: John Galswarthy (United Kingdom)
1931: Erik Karlfeldt (Sweden)
1930: Sinclair Lewis (United States)
1929: Thomas Mann (Germany)
1928: Sigrid Undset (Norway)
1927: Henri Bergson (France)
1926: Grazia Deledda (Italy)
1925: George Bernard Shaw (United Kingdom)
1924: Wladyslaw Reymont (Poland)
1923: William Butler Yeats (Ireland)
1922: Jacinto Benavente (Spain)
1921: Anatole France (France)
1920: Knut Hamsun (Norway)
1919: Carl Spitteler (Switzerland)
1917: Karl Gjellerup (Denmark)
1917: Henrik Pontoppidan (Denmark)
1916: Verner von Heidenstam (Sweden)
1915: Romain Rolland (France)
1913: Rabindranath Tagore (India)
1912: Gerhart Hauptmann (Germany)
1911: Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium)
1910: Paul Heyse (Germany)
1909: Selma Lagerlof (Sweden)
1908: Rudolf Eucken (Germany)
1907: Rudyard Kipling (United Kingdom)
1906: Giosue Carducci (Italy)
1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz (Poland)
1904: Jose Echegaray (Spain)
1904: Frederic Mistral (France)
1903: Bjornsterne Bjornson (Norway)
1902: Theodor Mommsen (Germany)
1901: Sully Prudhomme (France)