Favourite Nobel Prize Winning Novels/Poets

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Ben Jackson

Well-known member
We have all read many recipients of this illustrious Prize which has become the highlight of a writer's pains and struggles to put his/her artistic expressions into not just his/her country into the map of literature but also literary history. Some of these writers have become staple reading for diverse countries (I read Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea the same time I read Wuthering Heights, and studied Eliot's Journey of the Magi and Yeats' Second Coming during my High School days), some have become Canonical and in the process, gone on to become our favourite writers.

So, in this list, individuals have the liberty, in the spirit of the Nobel Prize, to share his/her 20 favourite Nobel Prize winning novels and 5 favourite Nobel Winning poets (if you've read poets). So share your lists, my friends, and let's enjoy your opinions. (I'll post mine later).
 
Benny Profane

Benny Profane

Well-known member
Poets: Perse, Carducci, Quasimodo, Montale and Szymborska;
Drama: Benavente, Beckett and Handke;
Novels: "Steppenwolf" and "Narcisus and Goldmund" (Hesse); "The Sound and the Fury", "Absalom, Absalom" and "As I Lay Dying" (Faulkner); "Magic Mountain", "Doctor Faustus" and "Buddenbroks" (Mann); "Auto-de-Fé" (Canetti); "El Veneno de la Madrugada" (García Marquez); "Sierra de Gredos" (Handke); "San Camilo, 1936", "La Familia de Pascual Duarte" and "Pabellón de Reposo" (Cela); "Beloved" and "Jazz" (Toni Morrison); "Shades Over Hudson", "The Penitent" and "Satan in Goray" (Isaac Bashevis Singer) and "Lord of Flies" (Golding).
 
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Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
Oh dear. ?

Favorite laureates and specific works in award-chron order:

Gerhart Hauptmann
Knit Hamsun, Mysteries
William Butler Yeats
George Bernard Shaw
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Luigi Pirandello
Eugene O’Neill
Frans Eemil Sillanpaa, People in the Summer Night
Hermann Hesse, Demian
André Gide, The Counterfeiters
T.S. Eliot
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Albert Camus, The Plague / The Fall
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Saul Bellow, Seize the Day / Henderson the Rain King
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
Harold Pinter
Louise Glück

Some observations:

1) Many omissions are unreads.
2) This list is surprisingly mainstreamy for me.
3) I am very good about reading plays.
 
wordeater

wordeater

Well-known member
My favourite novels by Nobel Prize laureates:

  1. Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
  2. Hermann Hesse - Siddharta
  3. Thomas Mann - Death in Venice
  4. Mario Vargas Llosa - The War of the End of the World
  5. Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
  6. Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago
  7. Gabriel García Márquez - Chronicle of a Death Foretold
  8. Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf
  9. Orhan Pamuk - Snow
  10. Pearl S. Buck - Peony
  11. Knut Hamsun - Hunger
  12. Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea
  13. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
  14. Selma Lagerlöf - Gösta Berling's Saga
  15. John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
  16. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
  17. Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat
  18. Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
  19. Toni Morrison - Beloved
  20. Mo Yan - Red Sorghum
 
B

Ben Jackson

Well-known member
First, let me post the Poets:

T.S.Eliot
Tomas Transtromer
Odysseus Elytis
Octavio Paz
Vincente Aleixandre

The lat name was difficult (I was confused to end the list between Neruda, Seferis, Jimenez, Pasternak and Aleixandre but choose Aleixandre). Will post the novels later.
 
Verkhovensky

Verkhovensky

Well-known member
Only novelists I've read 3+ works

GGM, One Hundred Years of Solitude > I wanted to put a lesser known title, but couldn't
MVL, The Feast of the Goat
Modiano, Dora Bruder
Coetzee, The Age of Iron
Handke, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
 
Hamishe22

Hamishe22

Well-known member
W. B. Yeats is definitely my favorite Nobel laureate of all time.

Among my top 10 novels of all time, one is written by a Nobel laureate: Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Funnily, in my top worst novels of all time list, there are two Nobel winners: The Museum of Innocence (number one) and Red Sorghum by Mo Yan.
 
S

Scott89119

Reader
Fun thread:

Sigrid Undset, Kristen Lavransdottir
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks
John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga (LOVE)
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Ernest Hemingway, As the Sun Rises
Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy
Toni Morrison, Beloved & Song of Solomon
Jose Saramago, Blindness
Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence
Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Bad Girl
Alice Munro, Open Secrets (love all her work though)
Patrick Modiano, In the Cafe of Lost Youth
Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
 
B

Ben Jackson

Well-known member
Scott89119 said:
Fun thread:

Sigrid Undset, Kristen Lavransdottir
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks
John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga (LOVE)
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
Ernest Hemingway, As the Sun Rises
Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy
Toni Morrison, Beloved & Song of Solomon
Jose Saramago, Blindness
Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence
Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Bad Girl
Alice Munro, Open Secrets (love all her work though)
Patrick Modiano, In the Cafe of Lost Youth
Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
Click to expand...

Love your list, my friend. But can you think of a novel that can replace Alexievich's Secondhand Time? It's non-fictional piece.
 
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