Nobel Prize for Literature

Announcement of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm by Horace Engdahl

The Nobel Prize for Literature is one of the five named in the will of Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel, who asked that they be awarded each year "to whoever produced the work in the field of literature." Most Outstanding, in the Ideal Direction', selected by the Swedish Academy (Swedish: Svenska Akademien), which announces them on the first Thursday of every October.

Creation

Alfred Nobel stipulated in his last will and testament that his money would be used to create a series of prizes for those who bestowed the "greatest benefit to humanity" in physics, chemistry, peace, physiology, or medicine and literature. Although Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last one was written just over a year before his death and signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on November 27. 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish kronor (198 million US dollars, 176 million 2016 euros), to establish and award the five Nobel Prizes. But it was not until 26 It was approved by the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) on April 18, 1897. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, who formed the Nobel Foundation to administer the Nobel fortune and organize the prizes.

The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. Award-winning organizations followed: the Karolinska Institutet on June 7, the Swedish Academy on June 9, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on June 11. The Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how award the Nobel Prize. In 1900, new statutes for the Nobel Foundation were promulgated by King Oscar II. According to Nobel's will, the prize for literature should be determined by "the Stockholm Academy", which according to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation meant the Swedish Academy.

Nomination and award procedure

Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of language academies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel laureates for literature, and presidents of writers' organizations may nominate a candidate. Self-proclaimed is not allowed.

Thousands of applications are sent every year and, for example in 2011, around 220 proposals were received. These proposals must be received by the Academy before February 1, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee. In April, the Academy narrows the field of choice to about twenty candidates. In May, the Committee will approve a short list of five names. The next four months are spent reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, the members of the Academy vote and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel Prize in Literature. No one can get the prize without being on the list at least twice; therefore, many authors reappear and are repeatedly revised over the years. The academy is proficient in thirteen languages, but when a candidate is shortlisted from a different language, they call on translators and sworn experts to provide samples of that writer.

Other elements of the process are similar to those for other Nobel laureates. The judges form a committee of 18 members who are elected for life, and until 2018 they are technically not allowed to leave. On May 2, 2018, King Carl XVI Gustaf amended the rules of the academy and made it possible for members to resign. The new rules also state that a member who has been inactive in academy work for more than two years may be asked to resign.

On November 19, 2018, it was announced that the Nobel Committee for 2019 and 2020 would consist of ten members, five of whom were external experts from outside the Academy. The committee consisted of the following people:

• Per Wästberg (member of the academy)
• Horace Engdahl (member of the academy, left the committee on March 5, 2019)
• Kristina Lugn (Academy member, died on May 9, 2020)
• Anders Olsson (member of the academy)
• Jesper Svenbro (member of the academy)
• Mikaela Blomqvist (literary criticism)
• Rebecka Kärde (literary criticism)
• Kristoffer Leandoer (writer, resigned to the committee on December 2, 2019)
• Henrik Petersen (translator)
• Gun-Britt Sundström (written, resigned from the committee on December 2, 2019)

Since October 20, 2020, the Nobel Committee has again been made up of only members of the Academy. However, a group of around ten people is formed with experts from outside academia to advise the Nobel Committee.

The prize is usually announced in October. Sometimes, however, the award has been announced the year after the nominal year, the latest case being the 2018 award. Amid controversy surrounding allegations of sexual assault, conflict of interest, and resignations, on In May 2018, the Swedish Academy announced that the 2018 winner would be announced in 2019 along with the 2019 winner.

Award criteria

113 Nobel prizes for literature have been awarded between 1901 and 2020, to 117 people: 101 men and 16 women. The prize has been divided between two people four times. It was not awarded seven times. Awardees have included writers in 25 different languages. The youngest laureate was Rudyard Kipling, who was 41 when he was awarded in 1907. The oldest laureate to receive the award was Doris Lessing, who was 88 when it was awarded in 2007. It has been awarded posthumously once, to Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1931. Two writers have declined the prize, Boris Pasternak in 1958 ("First accepted, then the rejection was provoked by the authorities of his country (Soviet Union)", according to the Nobel Foundation) and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964.

Alfred Nobel's guidelines for awarding the prize that the candidate should have bestowed "the greatest benefit to humanity" and write "in an ideal direction" have sparked much discussion. In the early history of the Nobel laureate, the Nobel "ideal" was interpreted as "a lofty and solid idealism." The set of criteria, characterized by its conservative idealism, which held church, state and family sacred, led to awards for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Rudyard Kipling and Paul Heyse. During World War I there was a policy of neutrality, which partly explains the number of prizes awarded to Scandinavian writers. In the 1920s, "ideal leadership" was interpreted more generously as "broad-hearted humanity," and writers such as Anatole France, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Mann were honored. In the 1930s, "the greatest benefit to mankind" was interpreted as writers within everyone's reach, with authors like Sinclair Lewis and Pearl S. Buck taking the prize. Beginning in 1946, a revamped Academy shifted focus and began rewarding literary pioneers such as Hermann Hesse, André Gide, T. S. Eliot, and William Faulkner. From this time on, "the greatest benefit to mankind" was interpreted in a more generous way than before. Since the 1970s, the Academy has often paid attention to internationally important but under-recognized writers, awarding writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Odysseus Elytis, Elias Canetti, and Jaroslav Seifert.

Starting in 1986, the Academy recognized the international horizon in Nobel's testament, which rejected any consideration for the nationality of the candidates, and awarded prizes to authors from all over the world such as Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt, Octavio Paz from Mexico, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, Derek Walcott from Saint Lucia, Toni Morrison, the first African American on the list, Kenzaburo Oe from Japan, and Gao Xingjian, the first prize to write in Chinese. In the 2000s, VS Naipaul, Mario Vargas Llosa and Chinese writer Mo Yan were honored, but the "one prize for everyone" policy has been less noticeable, as the Academy has mainly awarded European and Western writers. In 2015, a "rare" prize was awarded, due to the fact that the laureate was a non-fiction writer, named Svetlana Alexievich.

Who did not receive it

It is an award that has ignored authors who made significant contributions to letters and are recognized worldwide. Some experts^[who?] point out that great classical authors of the XX century did not receive the award. Rubén Darío is considered a key influence on Hispanic literature, being the leader of the modernist current that marks a change in Castilian letters and one of the most widely read Spanish-speaking writers and poets of all time. According to David Remnick, director of the magazine The New Yorker, writers such as Marcel Proust, or Vladimir Nabókov should have won the award. Literary critics such as Emmanuel Carballo and Sergio Nudelstejer add Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges to this list. Adolfo Castañón also includes Julio Cortázar.^{[citation required]} The writer and critic Noe Jitrik mentioned Augusto Roa Bastos in journalistic essays. Kjell Espmark, member of the Swedish Academy, in his book The Nobel Prize for Literature. One hundred years with the mission reviews some of the most serious omissions in the awarding of the Nobel, such as Miguel Delibes, León Tolstoy, Émile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, Paul Valéry, Benito Pérez Galdós or Rómulo Gallegos. Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 award, mentioned that Jorge Luis Borges and César Vallejo deserved the award.

Two of the winners withdrew the award: Boris Pasternak in 1958 (under intense pressure from the Soviet government) and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964 (claiming that acceptance would imply losing his status as a philosopher).

Chronological list of winners

Ibero-American awardees

Eleven Spanish-speaking authors —five Spaniards and six Latin Americans— have been honored: the Spaniards José Echegaray (1904), Jacinto Benavente (1922), Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956), Vicente Aleixandre (1977), Camilo José Cela (1989), the Chileans Gabriela Mistral (1945) and Pablo Neruda (1971), the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (1982), the Mexican Octavio Paz (1990) and the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa (2010). In contrast, only one Portuguese-language author has received the award: the Portuguese José Saramago (1998).