Since 1901, the Nobel Committee has honored outstanding individuals in the fields of science, peace and literature with a medal, personal diploma and cash award. In his will, Alfred Nobel noted the fourth prize area to be in literature, and since then, respected writers from broad social, cultural an critical areas have been honored, including Orhan Pamuk, Seamus Heaney, John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison.
The winner this year is Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Committee announced this morning from the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Sweden.
Winners of the Nobel Prize in literature since 1960:
— 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru.
— 2009: Herta Mueller, Germany.
— 2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, France.
— 2007: Doris Lessing, Britain.
— 2006: Orhan Pamuk, Turkey.
— 2005: Harold Pinter, Britain.
— 2004: Elfriede Jelinek, Austria.
— 2003: J.M. Coetzee, South Africa.
— 2002: Imre Kertesz, Hungary.
— 2001: V.S. Naipaul, Trinidad-born Briton.
— 2000: Gao Xingjian, Chinese-born French.
— 1999: Guenter 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, St. Lucia.
— 1991: Nadine Gordimer, South Africa.
— 1990: Octavio Paz, Mexico.
— 1989: Camilo Jose Cela, Spain.
— 1988: Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt.
— 1987: Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born American.
— 1986: Wole Soyinka, Nigeria.
— 1985: Claude Simon, France.
— 1984: Jaroslav Seifert, Czechoslovakia.
— 1983: William Golding, Britain.
— 1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia.
— 1981: Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born Briton.
— 1980: Czeslaw Milosz, Polish-born American.
— 1979: Odysseus Elytis, Greece.
— 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-born American.
— 1977: Vicente Aleixandre, Spain.
— 1976: Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American.
— 1975: Eugenio Montale, Italy.
— 1974: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, Sweden.
— 1973: Patrick White, British-born Australian.
— 1972: Heinrich Boell, West Germany.
— 1971: Pablo Neruda, Chile.
— 1970: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russia.
— 1969: Samuel Beckett, Ireland.
— 1968: Yasunari Kawabata, Japan.
— 1967: Miguel A. Asturias, Guatemala.
— 1966: Shmuel Y. Agnon, Polish-born Israeli, and Nelly Sachs, German-born Swede.
— 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov, russia.
— 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre, France (declined award).
— 1963: Giorgos Seferis, Turkish-born Greek.
— 1962: John Steinbeck, United States.
— 1961: Ivo Andric, Yugoslavia.
— 1960: Saint-John Perse, Guadeloupe-born French.
