FACTBOX - List of recent winners of the Nobel Literature prize

FACTBOX - List of recent winners of the Nobel Literature prize

2010-10-07 19:32:47 GMT+7 (ICT)

STOCKHOLM (BNO NEWS) -- Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. The following is a list of the most recent winners of the prize, followed by the citation attributed by the Swedish Academy:

• 2010: Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat."
• 2009: German author Herta Müller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."
• 2008: French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
• 2007: English writer Doris Lessing "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."
• 2006: Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."
• 2005: English writer Harold Pinter "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."
• 2004: Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."
• 2003: South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider."
• 2002: Hungarian writer Imre Kertész "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
• 2001: British writer V. S. Naipaul “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
• 2000: Chinese writer Gao Xingjian "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama."
• 1999: Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."
• 1998: José Saramago "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality."
• 1997: Dario Fo "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden."
• 1996: Wislawa Szymborska "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."
• 1995: Seamus Heaney "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
• 1994: Kenzaburo Oe "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
• 1993: Toni Morrison "who, in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
• 1992: Derek Walcott "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment."
• 1991: Nadine Gordimer "who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity."
• 1990: Octavio Paz "for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity."

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