Meme

[foudebassan]

Bold if you've read one or more books by the author.
Add an asterisk if said book(s) changed your life.
Italicise those you want to investigate (ie, those whose book(s) you've already bought or plan on buying)
Strike through those whose book(s) you didn't like or couldn't finish.



2006 Orhan Pamuk
2005 Harold Pinter
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2003 John Maxwell (J.M.) Coetzee
2002 Imre Kertész
2001 V.S. Naipaul
2000 Gao Xingjian
1999 Günter Grass (I read extracts but the German is too hard for me to face the entire thing just yet. I'll try again someday).
1998 José Saramago
1997 Dario Fo
1996 Wislawa Szymborska
1995 Seamus Heaney
1994 Kenzaburo Oe
* 1993 Toni Morrison
1992 Derek Walcott
1991 Nadine Gordimer
1990 Octavio Paz
1989 Camilo José Cela
1988 Naguib Mahfouz
1987 Joseph Brodsky
1986 Wole Soyinka
1985 Claude Simon
1984 Jaroslav Seifert
1983 William Golding
*1982 Gabriel García Márquez (in translation)
1981 Elias Canetti
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1979 Odysseus Elytis
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Vicente Aleixandre
1976 Saul Bellow
1975 Eugenio Montale
1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973 Patrick White
1972 Heinrich Böll (only in translation)
1971 Pablo Neruda (ditto)
1970 Alexander Solzhenitsyn (ditto)
* 1969 Samuel Beckett
1968 Yasunari Kawabata
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965 Michail Sholokhov
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1962 John Steinbeck
1961 Ivo Andric
1960 Saint-John Perse
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 Boris Pasternak (in translation)
1957 Albert Camus
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 Halldór Kiljan Laxness
1954 Ernest Hemingway
1953 Winston Churchill (did he actually write real books or is just collected speeches and "his views on the world"?)
1952 François Mauriac
1951 Pär Lagerkvist
1950 Bertrand Russell
1949 William Faulkner
1948 Thomas Stearns Eliot
1947 André Gide
* 1946 Hermann Hesse
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1944 Johannes V. Jensen
1943 Not given
1942 Not given
1941 Not given
1940 Not given
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 Pearl Buck
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1936 Eugene O'Neill
1935 Not given
1934 Luigi Pirandello
1933 Ivan Bunin
1932 John Galsworthy
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1930 Sinclair Lewis
1929 Thomas Mann
1928 Sigrid Undset
1927 Henri Bergson
1926 Grazia Deledda
1925 George Bernard Shaw
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1923 William Butler Yeats
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1921 Anatole France
1920 Knut Hamsun
1919 Carl Spitteler
1918 Not given
1917 Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1915 Romain Rolland
1914 Not given
1913 Rabindranath Tagore
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck
1910 Paul Heyse
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1908 Rudolf Eucken
1907 Rudyard Kipling
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1901 Sully Prudhomme

It does feel a bit sacrilegious to strike through Nobel prices. But what the hell. They too can be booooring.

Comments

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

I've done Sartre adn Camus in the original ~shows off~

Churchill wrote history books. They aren't bad.

You don't like Kipling?

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

I've only ever read the jungle book and it's really not my thing.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

You might like the Just So stories, or some of his short stories. His patriotism does grate a bit to modern ears, but he does capture an era perfectly.

And the Elephant's child...

[camillo1978.livejournal.com]

Just So stories are pretty cool. Loved them when I was little and my Mum read to me about the great grey green greasy banks of the Limpopo River ...

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've read this one in translation as a kid, the Limpopo rings a bell. Isn't it pretty silly though?

[camillo1978.livejournal.com]

It's very silly and therefore cool. My Mum read the elephant with his trunk in the jaws of a crocodile with her fingers pinching her nose. Much giggling.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Or how the Camel got his hump....

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

I'm not so fond of adventure/exotic stories :(

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

SOme of his short stories were set in the UK and that's not exotix. And the Just-So stories are kiddies stories, sort of parables, with a lyrical quality.

[aswanargent.livejournal.com]

Ooh, which Hesse? Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) by any chance?

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

No - Unterm Rad, Narziß und Goldmund, and parts of Siddharta (which I really didn't like, I was probably too young for it at the time). I loved Unterm Rad, though.