Talk:List of Nobel laureates in Literature

New page
This page is new, with the aim toward making it a featured list one of these days. Any suggestions or changes are welcome, as would be any available media (free images of the laureates would be fantastic). Irregulargalaxies 22:28, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Confusion about the countries
The problem with countries still remains unresolved. There is huge inconsistency between writers. Some of the entries focus on nationality, some on residence, some on ethnicity, some on where a writer was born. It's not the same thing at all to rely on the NobelPrize.org page 'Residence at the time of the award' for this category. Especially because there are more and more globalised writers with complex histories, there needs to be an adequate way to represent them. It is particularly galling, as someone who at least knows something about world literature, to see Czeslaw Milosz, for example, be reduced to an 'American'... BooksJay (talk) 08:42, 25 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that there should be consistency with this list. However, there is nothing "galling" about describing Czeslaw Milosz as an American. That is, in fact, what he was. From 1962 until his death, he was an American citizen. Note that he could have lived in the US under some other status (just as he had done in France), but instead he chose to naturalize as a citizen, which means he chose to identify as an American. I know he made various public claims over the years--it's not difficult to find Milosz quotes in which he calls himself Polish, Lithuanian, or American. But Wikipedia should be in the business of providing facts, and the fact is that Milosz, as an American citizen, was an American. And in fact, he won honors--including the US National Medal of Arts--that only Americans are eligible to receive. My fear is that, by listing his country here as Poland, Wikipedia readers will come away thinking "When he won the Nobel, he lived in Poland" or "When he won the Nobel, he was a Polish citizen," or "He must have been born in Poland," when none of those things is true. This is why the Nobel website provides both country of residence and country of birth--it lets people know when the situation is complicated and provides for a greater degree of accuracy. There is no such reflection of Milosz's situation, and no such accuracy, in simply listing his country as Poland. Those are my two cents. Thanks. IbIANTiA (talk) 10:19, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Why is Czesław Miłosz listed with duo countries of Poland and United States while T.S. Elliot is only listed with United Kingdom? Shouldn't there be some sort of consistency when we're listing cross national laureates? --Pengutron (talk) 22:46, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

This was a long-standing issue of contention in the original article (Nobel Prize in Literature). I believe the countries listed here are those listed on the website by the Nobel foundation, which is probably the most reliable source. Users can look at individual authors for more information about their citizenship/nationality/heritage. Irregulargalaxies (talk) 01:34, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

George Bernard Shaw is listed incorrectly as being from the United Kingdom. I have now corrected this to Ireland several times, but it keeps changing back. Why?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.239.70.128 (talk) 14:12, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Because we're following what is listed by the Nobel Foundation at their official website. -- Scorpion 0422  14:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * How about acknowledging we do know better and correcting the obvious mistakes? An information doesn't suddenly become true just because it's written somewhere, no matter how smart the author officially is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.175.191.119 (talk) 11:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The country of the Nobel site refers to the laureates' nationality at the time of their receipt of the prize. If they were of dual nationality and/or took up other nationality at some point of their lives, it should be acknowledged as such, IMHO. 121.6.96.185 (talk) 17:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If it is so, why is Rabindranath Tagore listed as being of Indian nationality at the time of their receipt of the prize? India became independent not earlier than in 1947. There were no Indian citizens before it. I've heard national flags were used during the Nobel ceremonies, probably it can help in finding the truth... 1450 (talk) 17:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

why is Nelly Sachs then listed under Germany when the official website says Sweden ? --CK85 (talk) 15:55, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Austria has had at least three laureates: Canetti,Jelinek, Handke. There may be others. The country list says 2.

Where is that purported list of Laureates per country in the Academy website? I can't find it. All I've found is a list by language. Ds77 (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Austria has had at least three laureates: Canetti,Jelinek, Handke. There may be others. The country list says 2.

Where is that purported list of Laureates per country in the Academy website? I can't find it. All I've found is a list by language. Ds77 (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Austria has had at least three laureates: Canetti,Jelinek, Handke. There may be others. The country list says 2.

Where is that purported list of Laureates per country in the Academy website? I can't find it. All I've found is a list by language. Ds77 (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Languages?
I know that this list used to include the languages of the laureates. I'm not sure why this was removed, surely it is more relevent than their nationalities, or at least equally so? -Kez (talk) 19:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I wholeheartedly agree. The language in which they write is crucially important. DORC (talk) 15:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I will add the list soon (or if anyone else would like to). Irregulargalaxies (talk) 23:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No one is going to add anything unless it's sourced. — sephiroth bcr  ( converse ) 03:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So you want a link to every author's bibliography?Irregulargalaxies (talk) 20:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If that can be classified as a source, I would say so. Even then, why is the language they write in "crucially important", especially if the nationality is listed? Dabomb87 (talk) 19:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I would have thought that obvious — literature is conveyed through language, and a nationality only reflects a birthplace and/or country of residence, with many countries being officially bi- or multilingual. For example there is currently no way to make the notable distinction between a solely Francophone and an Anglophone Canadian author. Similarly, it is important that Wole Soyinka writes in English and not any African language. Samuel Beckett was Irish, but his works were predominantly in French. The language of an author shows their readership, and in terms of the Nobel prize, the linguistic geography of the prize. -Kez (talk) 10:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Herta Mueller German and Romanian?
According to Herta Mueller's profile she is of both German and Romanian nationality, shouldn't this be identified on the Nobel Prize for literature listing? Brady Fish (talk) 15:59, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Currency
Perhaps add another more recognized currency inside parenthesis since I asume 10 000 000 SEK doesn't say anything to most people? Skether (talk) 21:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

herta mueller
she is born, raised and educated in Romania, graduating in German studies and Romanian literature, and left Romania only when she was already 34 years old. plus, her novels refer to Romania. she is German ethnic of Romania, so I guess it would be politically correct to place Romania instead of Germany, or at least to mention both. citing Germany for Mueller is like citing Israel for a Jewish writer of America, quite inappropriate —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.112.87.240 (talk) 22:30, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Sort Options
The sort options on this table do not opearte correctly for those entries where there are multiple prize-winners. Presentation is misaligned with the laurette's picture included in the year column and other information then shifted leftward. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.194.19.31 (talk) 14:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I added extra years to make the table sortable. It sort fine on year. What I really wanted to do was to sort on country. Unfortunately, it does not sort properly, but I don't understand why. Perhaps somebody with more expertise on wikipedia markup can make it sort properly, that is, all the nobel laurates from the same country together. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.9.208.110 (talk) 04:03, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Links to national literatures and "[year] in literature"
I added links for each year to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article and, for country names, to their corresponding national literature article. Now User:Scorpion0422 has removed the links twice (most recent ). Let's discuss the matter here and see if we can come to an agreement.

Many articles with lists of literary prizes link to the "[year] in literature" or "[year] in poetry" pages. (For example, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, T. S. Eliot Prize, Cholmondeley Award, The Age Book of the Year.) The idea is that someone interested in what else was produced in that year can easily find out, since those pages tend to have the more prominent books (of all types). By linking to those pages, we help readers who want to understand the context in which the author was writing. This tends to work a lot better for English-language authors, but it's still relevant for helping to understand others. It does absolutely no harm to the article to have the links, which I explained in a short note just above the list.

For articles on national literatures, the reasoning is similar. A French laureate was influenced by and in turn influenced French literature. To understand more about that, a link should be available. This makes the table much more useful. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 02:49, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * First of all, why did you re-add the fair use images that I also removed? The links you added were overlinking and the vast majority of them did not relate directly to the topic.
 * The reason I removed the year links is because the Nobel Prize is usually awarded as a lifetime achievement award and is more for an author's body of work than something in a specific year. Even an author receives it mostly for a single work, that work is usually released several years before the awarding of the prize. For example, Władysław Reymont won in 1924 for The Peasants, which he wrote between 1904 and 1909. So how does linking to a specific year help readers understand context, when the Nobel Prize usually isn't awarded for something written that year?
 * As for the literature links, authors are typically awarded for contributions to literature in general, not their influences in specific countries. Besides, being from a certain country doesn't automatically mean that one's work had a huge influence in that nation. -- Scorpion0422 II (Talk) 17:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The year-in-literature pages also have listings of other prizes awarded that year, often including prizes for contributions to literature in general. They are about everything to do with literature in a given year. The links allow readers to see what else was going on in events, works published and prizes given in that year, and they easily allow the reader to go further into other year-in-lit pages to get a sense of what was going on in that era with the prize-winner's contemporaries. That's how linking to a specific year helps readers understand context. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 04:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems like faulty logic to me. For example, how does knowing that P. H. Newby won the Booker Prize in 1969 help readers understand why the Nobel committee chose Samuel Beckett that year? And again, you seem to be approaching this as if it were an award like, for example, the Academy Awards, which recognizes achievements in a certain year. It's not, it's more of a lifetime achievement award. So, the links really are just overlinking and add a lot of unnecessary size (6,000 bytes. It may not seem like much but it's a lot to those with very slow connections). -- Scorpion 0422  01:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If you reread my last post, you'll find answers to the point you just made. Please respond to it. To repeat myself: The links allow readers to see what else was going on in events, works published and prizes given in that year, and they easily allow the reader to go further into other year-in-lit pages to get a sense of what was going on in that era with the prize-winner's contemporaries. The year-in pages don't just work individually -- readers have various ways of using them together to get a sense of what was being done (events), published, awarded and who was being born and dying in a particular year. It's pretty evident that someone would learn something about the times in which the Nobel committee decided Samuel Beckett should get the Nobel by looking at what else was going on in that year and in the years immediately previous (and perhaps even afterward). The place to start is the article for the year he won the prize. We don't have to know exactly what a particular reader is looking for or what a particular reader would learn, we just have to understand that this is a useful link for the kinds of information a reader might want to know about the literary world at the time it was decided that Beckett should be awarded the Nobel. Readers might also want to know what influence a Nobel to Beckett that year may have made on others in subsequent years, and a link to both the "Irish literature" and "1969 in literature" pages could be useful for that. The whole point is to link to pages that may either help explain the literary environment or that may point to other pages that will -- pages that might not be linked to from the author's own WP article. The Cholmondeley Awards, by the way, are English-language awards that are not necessarily based on the awardee's work of the previous year. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:29, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you should reread my post, because I did respond to your faulty logic. Besides, I have policy on my side, namely WP:OVERLINK. Also, hidden links such as those are discouraged. -- Scorpion 0422  19:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I won't write something long here. I agree with Scorpion. They shouldn't be linked. Esuzu  ( talk  •  contribs ) 18:01, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Nobel literature prize is an eurocentric prize without any value, please add a criticism paragraph about that matter.
Nobel literature prize is an eurocentric prize without any value, please add a criticism paragraph about that matter.

Is it normal Chinese spoken by 1 of 5 humans in earth has only 1 prize

Is it normal Hindi spoken by 1 of 5 humans im earth has only 1 prize

Is it normal Arabic known by 1 of 5 humans in earth and besides that the oldest still used language (3800 years) and the one with richest vocabulary (some 9,5 mln words) has only 1 prize!!!

If Nobel committee want that their prize be taken seriously Chinese should be awarded at least 20 prizes, otherwise they are making themselves funny, discredited and not taken seriously besides all why no AFRICAN LANGUAGE NOR AMERINDIAN NOR AUSTRALIAN language do not have any prize.

Also are those commitee supermen that can juge the books, most of the Nobel winners are second class writers why so giant litterature persons such as Nazim Hikmet, Ahmed Khalid Tawfiq, Morsi Abu Al Abbas, Forugh Farrokhzad and Erener Kendisiker lol have no prizes!!???

Please do include a paragraph about the criticism of that matter!

and thanks

Humanbyrace (talk) 10:05, 6 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I would be glad to add it, as long as you provide sources of people being critical of it. I agree in part with you (although not with the nonsense of Hindi or Arabic being spoken by 20% each in the world, nowhere even near, nor with the nonsense of Arabic being "the oldest and richest language", it's not even possible to compare languages in that way). I also think that the prize is too eurocentric, but this is not the place to insert our opinions. If you provide some sources of literary critics or notable journalists being critical of the same thing, I'll gladly add it.Jeppiz (talk) 09:49, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I did not said that Arabic Hindi and Mandarin are the native tongues of the 3/5 of world people but SPOKEN

Indeed nearly all Chinese know Mandarin (the lingua franca of China) same for Hindi in India and Arabic for muslims (as you know muslims should know some Arabic because Islamic prayers should be done in Arabic)

For age of Arabic, here in Wikipedia the non mutually intelligible (with modern French) medieval' "proto frenchic" Latin slang is assumed to be French so with the same logics I assumed that Ugaritic (closer in phonetics and grammar to modern Arabic than French is close to that medieval Latin slang assumed to be "old french") and same arguing could be said for Sanskrit/Hindi and Avestan/Persian (although the gap between those languages is even greater than French/"old French"

As for richness, I meant the number of words in dictionnary as -for example-the medieval Arabic dicitonary "lisan al arab" contains more than 5,5 mln words ;however according to some Arabic professors this number could be in reality closer to 10 mlns if we also count the dialectic words (as you may know there are more than 40 Arabic dialects which do contain dialectic words that are not included in the dictionnary for example such the now famous Egyptian Arabic Dialectal word "baltajia" (wich descends from Akkadian via Persian via Turkic to Egyptian Arabic) are not included in lisan al arab dictionnary and there are dozens of thousands of such words in the over 40 Arabic dialects and many times there are dialectal words whose stem are present in that dictionnary but that have "new" forms absent from the traditional Arabic forms such as the Egyptian Arabic word "laiba" wich stems from the Arabic stem "l'b" (to play) but has a "new" form "Faila" absent from the dictionnaries

Humanbyrace (talk) 19:07, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * In the time it took to write this essay on Arabic dictionaries, wasn't it possible to find some reputable sources discussing problems surrounding the prize?
 * But why do you expect a group of well-intentioned Swedish professors to be conversant in every one of the world's literary languages?
 * Every award everywhere will be specific to a certain national culture or a certain civilization. That is unavoidable. The professors cannot be expected to judge works that have never been translated into languages that they know how to read.
 * We do not have panels of angels to award literary prizes.
 * Varlaam (talk) 19:01, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Language
For some strange reason, a user has taken to delete the column with the language the laureates write/wrote in. That part of the article is as well sourced as anything else. The official size of the Nobel Prize, used as a source for this article, give the name, the country and the language for each laureate. I've assumed good faith this far, but further deletion of the column with language will start to look like vandalism, not a good faith edit.Jeppiz (talk) 18:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * So it is. The old version of the site did not include languages, and when I did check some random Nobel entries, I didn't see language (being more familiar with the old version of the Nobel site, I didn't realize there was more). But, please avoid blanket reverting contributions: you didn't check my edit and see that I also updated the lead. This is called "blind editing" and is strongly discouraged. -- Scorpion 0422  19:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You're absolutely right, sorry about that!Jeppiz (talk) 20:15, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for implementing this, I've been arguing for it since the column first disappeared, but wasn't sure if I could justify reinstating it without referencing every one, despite its crucial importance! However, shouldn't Samuel Beckett's be English and French, since his original works and translations were in both over his career? -Kez (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed that the list of laureates by language only listed one (1) author in the Polish, while the number should be 4. This has now been corrected; see http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/shortfacts.html for the official listings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.63.247.6 (talk) 13:43, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Nationalities
There seems to be constant contention about the winner's nationalities. Some of the discussion refers to the Nobel website as the source being used, but I can't see any mention of nationalities there. What is the link to the source? Greenman (talk) 21:56, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the site has changed a bit since the nationalities were added. The linked to pages used to include just the information provided in the rows of our tables. Now, you have to click "biographical", which has such information. We're going by the "Residence at the time of the award" listing. --  "Don't blame me, I voted for Scorpion  0422 " 23:11, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I put the source of Llosa's interview after the Nobel, although it's in Spanish, he is clear about it. He has 2 nationalities, Peruvian and Spanish, as he was born in Peru and most of his books were written and published in Spain, where he has lived most of his life.88.1.7.172 (talk) 04:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Irish winners
William Butler Yeats was from the Irish Free State when he won his Nobel in 1923. All latter Irish winners were from the Republic of Ireland. It's not gonna do any harm to show those accuracies. GoodDay (talk) 23:00, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Irish are not the sole controversial winners in this list. Poland did not exist as a state before 1917, but residention at the time of the award of some winners in the list is exactly "Poland". So having changed the nationality of one winner we'll have to do it with the others. So let them off. Ales (talk) 22:07, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Countries
A cleanup tag was added to the article with the comment "nationality or country, decide can't have 2". This seems to stem from the assumption that one can only have one country. However, the authors listed with more than one country have lived and written in one country, and later moved to another and coninued to work there. You're not bound to stay in one place for your entire life, and placing e.g. Ivan Bunin in either France or Russia, but only on of them, would simply not be true. We're not talking about place of birth here, and two countires listed are not one "country" and one "nationality". I'll remove the tag. /Julle (talk) 09:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The article is somewhat confused, and definitely ambiguous at times. Some places in the article talk about citizenship, some nationalities, ...
 * The 113 Nobel laureates in literature from 1901 to 2016 have come from the following countries:
 * What does come from mean? Does it imply country of birth or country of residence or nationality of awardee or citizenship(s) of awardee?
 * While it might have been right to remove a "cleanup" tag, the section I'm identifying which talks about countries needs some help so as not to confuse people trying to read tables and perform basic math. (I counted countries from the main table and used that to update the number for this table, and someone reverted my edit to this table.) 65.110.214.222 (talk) 14:54, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Recentism
Why does " In 2012, the prize was awarded to Mo Yan of China" appear in the lead?  ★ ★ RetroLord★ ★  09:27, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Flag icons on the list
There is no a detail regarding the appropriate use (organization etc.) of flag icons at Manual of Style/Icons. I don't think that an important detail on the list. The Nobel Committee's official web page has nothing to do with Wikipedia. As far as I know, Wikipedia rules valid in other languages​​: Furthermore, please look at other (non-org.) awards at the Featured lists:
 * Llista de guardonats amb el Premi Nobel de Literatura (Catalan)
 * Liste der Nobelpreisträger für Literatur (German)
 * Список лауреатов Нобелевской премии по литературе (Russian)
 * Nobel Edebiyat Ödülü sahipleri listesi (Turkish)
 * Pritzker Architecture Prize
 * Freedom Award
 * Shaw Prize
 * Grammy Award for Best World Music Album
 * Crafoord Prize and etc. — Maurice07 (talk) 13:11, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Consistency of the list
It seems that the column of countries is inconsistent. Why Henryk Sienkiewicz is from Poland in 1905 when there was no Poland at that point of the time? 5.134.65.136 (talk) 12:26, 11 October 2014 (UTC) I think the column should be renamed to "Nationality" instead of "Country". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.96.204.163 (talk) 15:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Unique aversion to the Francoist regime?
Two laureates, Jimenez and Aleixandre, are listed under "Country" as "Spanish State", which links to "Francoist Spain", while Echegaray, Benavente, and Cela are just "Spain". Why? Yes, the Francoist regime was in power when Jimenez won in 1956 (thought he wrote the work for which he won under the Bourbons and left Spain in 1916, and is acknowledged as being "domiciled in Puerto Rico" in his entry at nobel.org) and, inconsistently, when Aleixandre wrote, but *not* when he won. For that matter, Cela wrote most of his work while living in Francoist Spain. How about, for example "Fascist Italy", for Pirandello? How is Francoist Spain particularly different (n.b. no apologia for that regime particularly intended, but neither is it IMHO so uniquely awful as to deserve the special treatment in the list). I plan to edit Jimenez and Aleixandre's entries soon just to plain "Spain" if nobody responds here soonish. 142.129.255.114 (talk) 07:25, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Characteristic / example work
.... Following is the entire RfC discussion.Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:48, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I would like to propose the creation of a new column in this list which will contain a characteristic work of each laureate, at the example of Pritzker Architecture Prize.--The Theosophist (talk) 17:32, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think this makes sense. This information is straightforwardly available for authors, whose names are clearly associated with their works, in a way it's not available for architects. --Samuel J. Howard (talk) 19:45, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Could you elaborate on that? Oscar Niemeyer and I. M. Pei are at any rate much more famous than Frans Eemil Sillanpää and Erik Axel Karlfeldt. It would be very helpful if there was a link of one representative work for each author. After all, someone may not remember George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill but remember Arms and the Man and Long Day's Journey into Night.--The Theosophist (talk) 05:14, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * , what I'm saying is that due to the characteristic of authorship in literary works (the authors name is right there on the cover and the fact that authors' names are part of the typical categorization of literary works (e.g. in library catalogues) that just listing the name of the author sufficiently links them to their works in a way that does not happen for architects.--Samuel J. Howard (talk) 13:55, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, the representative work on the Pritzker prize page displays the work, not merely lists it. Due to the visual nature of architecture, this "visual excerpt" says a lot more about an architects work than a representative work listing, even if it was paired with an excerpt of the work says about an author.--Samuel J. Howard (talk) 13:55, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm also against -- going into what else they won elsewhere or later is not part of List of Nobel laureates in Literature. That would be non-Nobel stuff about the person, which might belong at the person's page -- and it's case by case what the person's article would have on it.  Besides, they're not all going to have gone on to the same things so it's diverse data that wouldn't mechanically be neatly captured in one column format.  Markbassett (talk) 23:50, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I cannot follow you. I do not see what my proposal of icnluding a famous book for each laureate has to do with “what else they won elsewhere or later”.--The Theosophist (talk) 03:24, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think he's pointing out, among other things, the problem that the Eugene O'Neill work you're suggesting, Long Day's Journey into Night, was written in 1941–42 and published in 1956, but O'Neill actually won the Nobel in 1936. The work that would be most representative for an author is quite possibly not the work that would be most representative of the achievements that caused the Nobel committee to award them the prize (for other reasons, because it may not have been written yet.)  This would be a total pain to curate on an ongoing basis to prevent people from putting post-Nobel representative works, which would have to be excluded to prevent a false linkage between those works and the prizes.--Samuel J. Howard (talk) 13:55, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, in that case we could decide which book we should include for each laureate here and then add the final list to the article.--The Traditionalist (talk) 03:28, 8 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Samuel J. Howard - I was reading ”The Theosophist to mean citing other awards they had, or other works and other things about the person unrelated to the Nobel award. The examplar mentioned of Pritzker Architecture Prize is to something given for a lifelong body of work and part of that seems to be citing one of them as the "Example work" for the artist.  The Nobel Prize on the other hand is awarded for a single outstanding achievement, and Nobel Prize in Literature for a specific work.  "A characteristic work" I say No that is outside the Nobel topic, both if it was after the award or if it was before and not what the award cited.  If you come back and make that "what they got the award for" I would say yes.  Markbassett (talk) 22:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The Nobel is not like the BAFTA. It is not awarded for a specific work but for the whole career of a writer, just like the Pritzker does for architects. Sometimes, in older years, it could occur that a laureate′s specific work was singled out in the citation, but the last time was in 1954.--The Traditionalist (talk) 01:49, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The Nobel is announced as 'for' something specific, see http://www.nobelprize.org/ -- and the suggestion seems to be to list something unrelated to the Prize, either later work or other awards or body of work or whatever just is not appropriate to the article list.  Markbassett (talk) 03:39, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you show me a page which supports the claim that the prize is anounced for a specific work?--The Traditionalist (talk) 03:43, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * p.s. This probably means the Pritzker Architecture Prize column header needs to be more clear about what "Example work" means. Markbassett (talk) 22:29, 9 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not adamantly against this, but I don't really support this idea either. It would have to name a work that at least partly contributed to their earning of the prize; but I imagine there would be heated argument over that. Aside from that, a column titled "notable work" seems too much like trivia to me. Eman 235 / talk  02:58, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Then should we remove its counterpart column from Pritzker Architecture Prize?--The Traditionalist (talk) 03:25, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Well...maybe, but since it's established, I'd be hesitant to do so. Eman 235 / talk  04:38, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Ivan Bunin?
"Nobel laureates by country" section tells: One Nobel laureate is classified as stateless (Ivan Bunin, 1933).

Therefore it is odd that the table of laureates has his county as France. So, is he classified as "stateless" or not? If I understand correctly, the infos should match each other. 93.106.7.43 (talk) 04:56, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

George Bernard Shaw
The column is called "Country" which I interpret as meaning "Citizenship". Shaw was born in the United Kingdom, lived in the United Kingdom and died in the United Kingdom. I do not know if he also held Irish citizenship, but, whatever his fatherland might have been, he primarily was a citizen/subject/national of the United Kingdom.--The Traditionalist (talk) 11:16, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * It is not stated that the column means citizenship; in any case this has been discussed at length on the Shaw article page citing sources and the consensus was that he be described as Irish. He always described himself as a foreigner in Britain and only accepted the Nobel prize (he rejected all other honours bar the Oscar) because his wife pointed out it would be honouring Ireland. Straw Cat (talk)

Rabindranath Tagore country
I have changed the country and flag for Rabindranath Tagore to "British Raj (India)" to match the historically accurate labels of the other laureates. It does not appear to have been discussed before, so I have made the change. If there was already a discussion and consensus about this topic, feel free to revert. Fishal (talk) 23:06, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Year 1918
The list states incorrectly that the Prize was not awarded in 1918. It was awarded to Erik Axel Karlfeldt who declined to accept it, just like Jean Paul Sartre and Boris Pasternak. He was awarded the Prize once again in 1931, posthumously. --Jidu Boite (talk) 08:23, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Sienkiewicz's country
Sienkiewicz's country appears as "Poland (Russian Empire)". I believe the author would be appalled by such a statement. I propose a change that would acknowledge the complexity of the situation - that he considered himself a Pole, but at the time the polish territories were annexed by three neighboring countries including the Russian Empire. 31.0.79.114 (talk) 14:25, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Gender chart
Should there be more women/equal amount of both genders winning the prize? Espngeek (talk) 17:33, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
 * There is a section devoted to this discussion on Nobel_Prize. I don't think a chart adds anything to this specific list. Irregulargalaxies (talk) 16:46, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistency in country counts
By chance, I noticed that under the section "Nobel laureates by country," the article states that there has been 119 nobel prize winners (from 1901 through 2022). By today, shouldn't this be 122? (99 in the 20th century and 23 in the 21st century). Furthermore, the list of winners by country adds up to 129, so there must be a miscounting somewhere+ AlexanderSokolDk (talk) 07:41, 7 October 2022 (UTC)


 * There is not always one laureate per year. There have been years with no awardees (eg, 1914) and years with multiple awardees (eg, 1974). Irregulargalaxies (talk) 16:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Map
A map of birthplaces was added recently. A couple points for discussion:
 * It's hugely incomplete - it's missing basically every European laureate between 1915 and 1984.
 * Adding all the laureates would probably make a map unreadably dense in parts.
 * It has multiple location errors - Gurnah's birthplace is in Kenya instead of Zanzibar, Cela is on Sardinia instead of Spain, etc.
 * There are formatting errors - the (short) family name is Gao, not Xingjian, for example.

To the larger point, I don't think this adds anything significant to the article. The country/nationality of the authors is listed individually and also as a summary list. A birthplace map essentially regurgitates most of that same information, but adding potential confusion for authors who were born in a different location from where they primarily lived or are associated with their work (eg, Simon, Undset, Bellow, etc). Even with all of that, the maps increase the article size without adding significant information.

I'm appreciative of the effort, but suggest that it be removed. Opening this section for discussion, however. Irregulargalaxies (talk) 17:03, 1 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree with the rationale, mainly point two, having a complete map would make it unreadable. Auguel (talk) 16:28, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * All the laureates have been added and corrected on the European map and it looks perfectly readable to me. Mondrian (talk) 13:59, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Zm 114.29.224.151 (talk) 09:09, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Redirects for years without separate articles.
I've made  link to the table here for 5 years which don't have their own articles, and added extra anchors so each links to the right row of the table. This means that the next/last year links go to the table when there isn't an article instead of being red links.

The year isn't a link (as it would only link back to itself), but it should become one if one of these is turned into an article. Aoeuidhtns (talk) 13:50, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Jacob Elson
There hasn't been a Nobel Prize for Literature for 2024, so Jacob Elson (whoever that is) hasn't won it. 40.132.68.49 (talk) 19:39, 12 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Obvious vandalism cases like that can/should be reverted immediately without needing to bring it up on Talk, though. Irregulargalaxies (talk) 02:28, 11 June 2024 (UTC)