Top 5 Favorite Nobel Prize Winners?

[redhead]

The Nobel Prize in Literature has made some pretty controversial picks and snubs over the years, but they have had brilliant picks more than a lot of people care to admit. So, who are your top 5 authors that have won the award?

1. Saul Bellow
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Jose Saramago
4. Hermann Hesse
5. Samuel Beckett and Patrick White

Maybe that last one is cheating, but I can't bring myself to kick any of those 2 off my list.

 

[Cleanthess]

Since the Original Poster cheated first, let me follow on his footsteps and list more than five.

Six winners from the first half of the 20th Century:
Rudyard Kipling, 1907.
Selma Lagerlof, 1909.
Rabindranath Tagore, 1913.
Anatole France, 1921.
Herman Hesse, 1946.
William Faulkner, 1949.

And six winners from the second half of the Century:
Samuel Beckett, 1969.
Pablo Neruda, 1970.
Eugenio Montale, 1975.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1982.
Wislawa Szymborska, 1996.
Gunter Grass, 1999.

Towards those 12 writers I feel enormous gratitude. They've given me some of the happiest moments of my life while reading their works.

 

[redhead]

Haha fair enough. By the way, how are Anatole France and Selma Lagerlof? I own the Penguin classics edition of The Gosta Berling Saga and free translations of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and some other books who's names escape me by both of them. Are they good?

 

[Cleanthess]

At some point in time Anatole France was considered the greatest living writer. But he was an anachronism: a late 19th. Century kind of writer alive at the time of the surrealist revolution; and the surrealists performed a thorough demolition of his reputation. His best books are ironic, intellectual, humanistic and skeptic in a tradition that goes all the way back to Montaigne.

I'd recommend his short stories The Procurator of Judea and Laeta Acilia and the novel The Revolt of the Angels, to explore his sour religious fiction. And for the sweeter side of his fiction I'd recommend his novellas: The Book of My Friend and The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. All these works are fun, written in a clear style, with interesting plots, cunningly crafted and filled with memorable sentences like:
'The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.'

As for Selma Lagerlof's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and her fantastic short stories and legends, those are the kind of books to be read when you are young to fully experience their charm.

 

[Remora]

Of the 104 Nobel Prize winners, I can claim to have read 23 of them.

My top 5 are:

1. Samuel Beckett
2. J. M. Coetzee
3. V. S. Naipaul
4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Ernest Hemingway

I wonder what my list would look like if I had read all 104.

 

[Stiffelio]

Thomas Mann
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
Nadine Gordimer
Kenzaburo Oe
Mario Vargas Llosa

 

[Uemarasan]

1. Kawabata Yasunari
2. Patrick White
3. Naguib Mahfouz
4. Oe Kenzaburo
5. Toni Morrison
6. Wislawa Szymborska
7. Elfriede Jelinek

The greatest literature I've read from the 20th century come from Asia, South America, and Africa, or are written by women. These are all lacking in the list of Nobel Prize winners.

 

[Julgranskrille]

Thomas Mann
Francois Mauriac
Ernest Hemingway
Samuel Beckett
Günter Grass

The greatest literature I've read from the 20th century come from Asia, South America, and Africa, or are written by women.

Then you have a lot of great literature left to read.

 

[Uemarasan]

Then you have a lot of great literature left to read.

If you mean Western literature or that written by men, then I've read a lot and enough, thank you very much. Your condescending, presumptuous tone was pointless and not necessary.

I feel that your comment really just applies to you, going by the limited range of your choices.

 

[DouglasM]

My favorites:

1913, Rabindranath Tagore
1920, Knut Hamsun
1955, Halldór Laxness
1957, Albert Camus
1998, José Saramago

 

[Daniel del Real]

Since everyone is cheating I will as well:

Camus, Sartre, Kawabata, GGM, Mahfouz, Kenzaburo, Saramago, Coetzee, Müller, Vargas Llosa

If you force me to pick five, they're in bold.

 

[Vazquez]

Digging some old posts...

I was searching about Kawabata and then I found this Top 5! So let's do mine!

I have read about 41 laureates. My favorites are (no order):

Llosa, Lessing, Pinter, Oe, Kawabata

 

[pesahson]

Two people mentioned Tagore here of whom I haven't even heard. Must.read.him.

My list will be cheated as well and it goes like this:

Czesław Miłosz
Naguib Mahfouz
Toni Morrison
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Joseph Brodsky
Giorgos Seferis (if only for his wonderful poem "Helen")

 

[spacepirate]

1. Mo Yan
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Pablo Neruda
4. Albert Camus
5. Toni Morrison

 

[Stevie B]

Tough call because, in some cases, I've only read a single book by some Nobel-winning authors. On the other hand, I may have liked that one book better than multiple books by other Nobel-winning authors. Anyway, enough blah, blah, blah. Here's my list (in no particular order):

Yasunari Kawabata
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jose Camilo Cela
Knut Hamsun (based on Hunger alone) / Alice Munro (based on many short stories)
Heinrich Boll

As far as Nobel-winning authors whom I haven't read (but whom I would like to read soon) are concerned, Ivan Bunin, Halldor Laxness, and Grazia Deledda would top my list. But, perhaps, that's another thread...

 

[OverTheMountains]

I tried to get involved in this thread and have failed to do so. All of your lists are so interesting! But is it possible to select only five? You all impress me so much with your discipline - even those of you who have cheated.

 

[pesahson]

I tried to get involved in this thread and have failed to do so. All of your lists are so interesting! But is it possible to select only five? You all impress me so much with your discipline - even those of you who have cheated.

Oh, come on. Just give us your list!

 

[Stevie B]

I tried to get involved in this thread and have failed to do so. All of your lists are so interesting! But is it possible to select only five? You all impress me so much with your discipline - even those of you who have cheated.

I confess to cheating by adding a sixth author, but in my defense, I only used five lines.

 

[Caodang]

1. Saramago.
2. Marquez.
3. Kawabata.
4. Faulkner.
5. Oe.
6. Coetzee.

Now it's my turn to cheat

 

[Daniel del Real]

1. Saramago.
2. Marquez.
3. Kawabata.
4. Faulkner.
5. Oe.
6. Coetzee.

Now it's my turn to cheat

I really like your list, I really do. I love all of them but Faulkner.