Got an idea to list all Nobel Prize in Literature winners and try to read at least one piece by all of them. Then I encountered another attempting the same at http://kirjani.vuodatus.net/blog/category/Nobel-haaste.
*** = read
¨¨¨= working on it
2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
¨¨¨2007 Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
2006 Orhan Pamuk
2005 Harold Pinter
2004 Elfriede Jelinek
2003 J.M. Coetzee
2002 Imre Kertész
¨¨¨2001 V.S. Naipaul - The Mimic Men
2000 Gao Xingjian
¨¨¨1999 Günter Grass - Peltirumpu
***1998 José Saramago - The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
1997 Dario Fo
1996 Wislawa Szymborska
1995 Seamus Heaney
1994 Kenzaburo Oe
***1993 Toni Morrison - many
1992 Derek Walcott
***1991 Nadine Gordimer - The Burgher's Daughter
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 - The Lord of the Flies
¨¨¨1982 Gabriel García Márquez - Sadan vuoden yksinäisyys
1981 Elias Canetti
1980 Czeslaw Milosz
1979 Odysseus Elytis
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Vicente Aleixandre
¨¨¨1976 Saul Bellow - Mr. Sammler's Planet
1975 Eugenio Montale
1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson
1973 Patrick White
1972 Heinrich Böll
1971 Pablo Neruda
1970 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
¨¨¨1969 Samuel Beckett - Watt
1968 Yasunari Kawabata
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias
1966 Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs
1965 Mikhail Sholokhov
¨¨¨1964 Jean-Paul Sartre - Inho
1963 Giorgos Seferis
¨¨¨1962 John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
1961 Ivo Andric
1960 Saint-John Perse
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1958 Boris Pasternak
¨¨¨1957 Albert Camus - Sivullinen
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1955 Halldór Laxness
***1954 Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
1953 Winston Churchill
1952 François Mauriac
1951 Pär Lagerkvist
¨¨¨1950 Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian
¨¨¨1949 William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
***1948 T.S. Eliot - Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
1947 André Gide
1946 Hermann Hesse
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1944 Johannes V. Jensen
(No prize in four years)
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1938 Pearl Buck
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1936 Eugene O'Neill
(No prize in 1935)
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 - Pygmalion
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1923 William Butler Yeats
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1921 Anatole France
1920 Knut Hamsun
1919 Carl Spitteler
(No prize in 1918)
1917 Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1915 Romain Rolland
(No prize in 1914)
1913 Rabindranath Tagore
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck
1910 Paul Heyse
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1908 Rudolf Eucken
¨¨¨1907 Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1901 Sully Prudhomme
And thus it begins.
4 kommenttia
millikan
28.7.2009 12:38
Hmm, eight, with couple more whose books I have started but didn't finish, maybe some other time...though of those Heinrich Böll is the only one I have read more than one or two books.
Splenetic
28.7.2009 14:07
And I can't even name a single Böll book... shame on me...
Orhan Pamuk... wasn't he the Turkish guy whose book title was 'Snow'? Have to check because that combination sounds fairly interesting.
And it probably goes without saying that my summer reading list could be thrown out of the window by now... I've read a lot, yes, but not much from the list. Apparently lists, to me, are a list of books I'm probably not going to read during the summer... or a guide line, really.
millikan
30.7.2009 13:40
Good starting point would be "Katarina Blumin menetetty maine", it's short and quick to read and very good too...and should be easily available in libraries.
Yes, I think Snow was by Pamuk...he has also some historical novels, I think?
I probably should read some Lessing, and I am somewhat intererested in Dario Fo too...
Splenetic
30.7.2009 22:39
Katarina Blum... okay, thanks, I'll see what I can find tomorrow at the library (they'll probably be demanding rent from me any time soon, I spend so much time there... ;D).
Lessing's 'The Golden Notebook' (suom. 'Kultainen muistikirja') is a classic, so that might prove useful in literary conversations. And yes, 'Snow' was by Pamuk; fished it out of the shelf at the library today and discovered that it's a looooot thicker than I would have thought/hoped. Also borrowed Solzenitsyn's 'Ivan Denisovitsin päivä' as the classic 'Vankilasaaristo' was nowhere to be found. The earlier winners are completely unfamiliar to me... one would think they're the ones everyone knows but no: only Kipling and only because of Disney's version. Isaac Singer... sounds vaguely familiar... I think I have read something by him, some kind of a fairy tale story... at Tutorial one! Huh.. have to dig that one up. I liked the tale.
Funny how Keltainen kirjasto and Nobel winners tend to go hand in hand in the Finnish literary scene. One can take on Yellow and be certain that it has some literary value even if it hadn't won the Nobel Prize.. yet, at least. Though I think they didn't translate Morrison's books until she won the Nobel... shame on them!