Which writer refused the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to him in 1964?
- A.Albert Camus
- B.Boris Pasternak
- C.Jean-Paul Sartre
- D.Samuel Beckett
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, Jean-Paul Sartre. The French philosopher and novelist declined the prize of 1964, explaining that a writer must not allow himself to be transformed into an institution and that he had always refused official honours. Option B, Boris Pasternak, is the other famous non-acceptance, but his case was different: chosen in 1958 for Doctor Zhivago, he first accepted and was then forced by the Soviet authorities to decline, so his refusal was not voluntary. Option A, Albert Camus, accepted the prize in 1957 and at the time was among the youngest laureates. Option D, Samuel Beckett, accepted the prize in 1969 though he avoided the ceremony. Examiners pair the two refusals deliberately, so remember Sartre in 1964 by choice and Pasternak in 1958 under compulsion.
Read the full article: Nobel Prize in Literature: Laureates and Their Works
Practice Questions
View allFor which collection of poems was Rabindranath Tagore awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913?
- A.Gora
- B.Gitanjali
- C.Chokher Bali
- D.Ghare Baire
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The Swedish Academy cited the profoundly sensitive and beautiful verse of Gitanjali, which Tagore had himself rendered into English as Song Offerings and published in 1912 with an introduction by W. B. Yeats; the prize made him the first Asian and the first non-European laureate in any Nobel category.
Read the full explanation →Who wrote the book 'The Golden Boat'?
- A.Satyajit Ray
- B.Munshi Prem Chand
- C.Rabindranath Tagore
- D.RK Narayan
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The Golden Boat is the English title of Sonar Tari, the Bengali collection of poems Tagore published in 1894, nineteen years before his Nobel Prize, and its title poem is among the best known in modern Bengali verse.
Read the full explanation →Which institution selects the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature?
- A.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- B.The Swedish Academy
- C.The Norwegian Nobel Committee
- D.The Karolinska Institute
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Alfred Nobel's will of 1895 named a different body for each prize, and for literature it named the Academy in Stockholm, founded in 1786 to guard the Swedish language, which still announces the laureate each October.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
- A.Selma Lagerlof
- B.Pearl S. Buck
- C.Toni Morrison
- D.Grazia Deledda
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The Swedish writer won the prize in 1909, eight years after the prize was first given, and she was later also the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy itself.
Read the full explanation →'One Hundred Years of Solitude', a landmark novel of magical realism, was written by which Nobel laureate?
- A.Pablo Neruda
- B.Mario Vargas Llosa
- C.Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- D.Octavio Paz
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The Colombian writer published One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1967, the chronicle of the Buendia family in the imaginary town of Macondo, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982; his other celebrated novel is Love in the Time of Cholera.
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