Nobel Prize in Literature: Laureates and Their Works

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the single most asked item in the books and authors section of general knowledge papers. Questions come in three shapes: who won in a particular year, which work the prize was given for, and which laureate was the first of some kind, the first Asian, the first woman, the first African. All three are settled facts that never change, so this is one of the cheapest scoring areas in the paper.

How the prize works

Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynamite, left a will in 1895 directing that the bulk of his fortune be used for prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. He died on 10 December 1896, and the first prizes were awarded in 1901. The literature prize is decided by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, the peace prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo, and the prize in economic sciences, added in 1968 by the central bank of Sweden, is awarded alongside them. The names are announced in October and the medals are presented every year on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death, in Stockholm, except the peace prize, which is presented in Oslo.

A laureate may refuse the prize. Boris Pasternak, chosen in 1958 for his novel Doctor Zhivago, was compelled by the Soviet authorities to decline it, and Jean-Paul Sartre refused it outright in 1964 saying that a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution. The literature prize was also not awarded in several war years, and in 2018 it was postponed, so that in 2019 the Swedish Academy named laureates for both years.

Rabindranath Tagore, the first laureate from Asia

Rabindranath Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, the collection of devotional poems he had himself rendered into English as Song Offerings, published in 1912 with an introduction by W. B. Yeats. He became the first Asian and the first non-European to win the prize in any field, and he remains the only Indian citizen to have won it in literature. Tagore was born in Calcutta in 1861, wrote in Bengali, founded Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, renounced his knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, and wrote the national anthems of two countries, Jana Gana Mana for India and Amar Shonar Bangla for Bangladesh. His other well known works include Gora, Ghare Baire, Chokher Bali, Sonar Tari, translated as The Golden Boat, and the play Dak Ghar or The Post Office.

Two other laureates in literature are linked to India. Rudyard Kipling, who won in 1907 and remains the youngest literature laureate, was born in Bombay in 1865 and wrote The Jungle Book and Kim. V. S. Naipaul, who won in 2001, was born in Trinidad to a family of Indian origin and wrote A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and An Area of Darkness.

Laureates and works worth memorising

Indian and India-linked Nobel laureates

Questions often widen from literature to the whole Nobel list, so keep the Indian citizens together: Rabindranath Tagore in literature in 1913, C. V. Raman in physics in 1930, Mother Teresa for peace in 1979, Amartya Sen in economic sciences in 1998 and Kailash Satyarthi for peace in 2014. Laureates of Indian origin or birth who held other citizenships include Har Gobind Khorana in medicine in 1968, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in physics in 1983, V. S. Naipaul in literature in 2001, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan in chemistry in 2009 and Abhijit Banerjee in economic sciences in 2019.

How to revise this topic

Learn the prize in four lists. First, the firsts: 1901 for the first prize, 1909 for the first woman, 1913 for the first Asian, 1986 for the first African, 1988 for the first Arabic writer and 2000 for the first Chinese writer. Second, the refusals, Pasternak and Sartre. Third, the famous title with its author, because most questions are of this kind. Fourth, the administrative facts: the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, 10 December and 1901.