Every Nobel Prize in Literature winner, 1901–2026

The Nobel Prize in Literature has gone to 123 writers since 1901; in 1904, 1917, 1966 and 1974 the prize was shared, and in 7 years it was not given at all. The Swedish Academy gives it each year to a writer for their work as a whole, not for a single book. The latest winner is Anne Carson (2026). Of the 95 winners with at least two books on ReadingRate, the most approachable is Rudyard Kipling, whose 3 books there have a typical difficulty of 36/100; the hardest is Elfriede Jelinek, at 75/100.

How book difficulty is measured

2026

• Anne Carson. On ReadingRate: Nox (difficulty 46/100), The Beauty of the Husband (difficulty 51/100), Glass, Irony and God (difficulty 65/100), Economy of the Unlost (difficulty 66/100), Eros the Bittersweet (difficulty 68/100), Red Doc> (difficulty 70/100), Autobiography of Red (difficulty 71/100)

2025

• László Krasznahorkai. On ReadingRate: The Last Wolf & Herman (difficulty 63/100), The World Goes On (difficulty 68/100), Seiobo There Below (difficulty 69/100), Herscht 07769 (difficulty 71/100), War and War (difficulty 72/100), Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (difficulty 78/100), Satantango (difficulty 80/100), The Melancholy of Resistance (difficulty 85/100)

2024

• Han Kang. On ReadingRate: Greek Lessons (difficulty 54/100), We Do Not Part (difficulty 61/100), The Vegetarian (difficulty 63/100), The White Book (difficulty 64/100), Human Acts (difficulty 71/100)

2023

• Jon Fosse. On ReadingRate: Morning and Evening (difficulty 54/100), Melancholy (difficulty 60/100), A Shining (difficulty 63/100), Septology (difficulty 67/100)

2022

• Annie Ernaux. On ReadingRate: Look at the Lights, My Love (difficulty 17/100), Getting Lost (difficulty 43/100), Simple Passion (difficulty 43/100), The Possession (difficulty 44/100), A Woman's Story (difficulty 45/100), A Man's Place (difficulty 55/100), The Years (difficulty 63/100), Happening (difficulty 66/100)

2021

• Abdulrazak Gurnah. On ReadingRate: Afterlives (difficulty 45/100), Pilgrims Way (difficulty 53/100), By the Sea (difficulty 65/100), Desertion (difficulty 67/100), Gravel Heart (difficulty 74/100), Admiring Silence (difficulty 79/100)

2020

• Louise Glück. On ReadingRate: The Seven Ages (difficulty 62/100), The Wild Iris (difficulty 66/100)

2019

• Peter Handke. On ReadingRate: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (difficulty 49/100), Short Letter, Long Farewell (difficulty 53/100), The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (difficulty 60/100), My Year in the No-Man's-Bay (difficulty 60/100), Repetition (difficulty 61/100)

2018

• Olga Tokarczuk. On ReadingRate: Primeval and Other Times (difficulty 60/100), The Books of Jacob (difficulty 66/100), Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (difficulty 66/100), The Empusium (difficulty 70/100), House of Day, House of Night (difficulty 70/100), Flights (difficulty 71/100)

2017

• Kazuo Ishiguro. On ReadingRate: The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain: Lyrics for Stacey Kent (difficulty 32/100), Never Let Me Go (difficulty 57/100), The Buried Giant (difficulty 61/100), A Pale View of Hills (difficulty 63/100), When We Were Orphans (difficulty 63/100), Klara and the Sun (difficulty 65/100), An Artist of the Floating World (difficulty 70/100), The Remains of the Day (difficulty 74/100), The Unconsoled (difficulty 80/100)

2016

• Bob Dylan. On ReadingRate: Tarantula (difficulty 67/100), Chronicles: Volume One (difficulty 74/100)

2015

• Svetlana Alexievich. On ReadingRate: The Unwomanly Face of War (difficulty 29/100), Zinky Boys (difficulty 50/100), Voices from Chernobyl (difficulty 56/100), Secondhand Time (difficulty 63/100)

2014

• Patrick Modiano. On ReadingRate: Missing Person (difficulty 58/100), So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood (difficulty 59/100), In the Café of Lost Youth (difficulty 60/100), Dora Bruder (difficulty 64/100)

2013

• Alice Munro. On ReadingRate: Runaway (difficulty 45/100), The Love of a Good Woman (difficulty 46/100), Dear Life (difficulty 49/100), Lives of Girls and Women (difficulty 52/100), Dance of the Happy Shades (difficulty 52/100), The Beggar Maid (difficulty 54/100), Friend of My Youth (difficulty 72/100)

2012

• Mo Yan. On ReadingRate: Big Breasts and Wide Hips (difficulty 52/100), The Garlic Ballads (difficulty 55/100), Red Sorghum (difficulty 59/100), Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (difficulty 62/100), Frog (difficulty 70/100), Sandalwood Death (difficulty 70/100), The Republic of Wine (difficulty 78/100)

2011

• Tomas Tranströmer. On ReadingRate: The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (difficulty 43/100), Baltics (difficulty 55/100), The Half-Finished Heaven (difficulty 62/100)

2010

• Mario Vargas Llosa. On ReadingRate: Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (difficulty 41/100), The City and the Dogs (difficulty 45/100), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (difficulty 52/100), The War of the End of the World (difficulty 54/100), The Feast of the Goat (difficulty 57/100), Conversation in The Cathedral (difficulty 62/100), In Praise of the Stepmother (difficulty 63/100), The Green House (difficulty 64/100), The Time of the Hero (difficulty 64/100)

2009

• Herta Müller. On ReadingRate: The Hunger Angel (difficulty 58/100), The Land of Green Plums (difficulty 58/100), The Appointment (difficulty 71/100)

2008

• J. M. G. Le Clézio. On ReadingRate: Onitsha (difficulty 53/100), Desert (difficulty 54/100), The Prospector (difficulty 55/100), The Interrogation (difficulty 61/100)

2007

• Doris Lessing. On ReadingRate: The Fifth Child (difficulty 54/100), Briefing for a Descent into Hell (difficulty 61/100), The Good Terrorist (difficulty 62/100), The Sirian Experiments (difficulty 63/100), The Grass is Singing (difficulty 71/100), The Golden Notebook (difficulty 71/100)

2006

• Orhan Pamuk. On ReadingRate: A Strangeness in My Mind (difficulty 47/100), Snow (difficulty 61/100), My Name Is Red (difficulty 63/100), The White Castle (difficulty 63/100), The Black Book (difficulty 64/100), The Museum of Innocence (difficulty 70/100), Nights of Plague (difficulty 73/100), The New Life (difficulty 75/100)

2005

• Harold Pinter. On ReadingRate: The Birthday Party (difficulty 60/100)

2004

• Elfriede Jelinek. On ReadingRate: The Children of the Dead (difficulty 71/100), The Piano Teacher (difficulty 75/100), Lust (difficulty 78/100)

2003

• J. M. Coetzee. On ReadingRate: Jesus Trilogy (difficulty 56/100), The Schooldays of Jesus (difficulty 58/100), Life & Times of Michael K (difficulty 59/100), Disgrace (difficulty 59/100), Foe (difficulty 60/100), Elizabeth Costello (difficulty 62/100), Slow Man (difficulty 64/100), Waiting for the Barbarians (difficulty 65/100), Summertime (difficulty 75/100), Diary of a Bad Year (difficulty 76/100), Age of Iron (difficulty 77/100)

2002

• Imre Kertész. On ReadingRate: Fatelessness (difficulty 56/100), Fiasco (difficulty 58/100), Kaddish for an Unborn Child (difficulty 69/100), Liquidation (difficulty 71/100)

2001

• V. S. Naipaul. On ReadingRate: An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India (difficulty 28/100), A House for Mr. Biswas (difficulty 46/100), A Bend in the River (difficulty 49/100), Among the Believers : An Islamic Journey (difficulty 50/100), Guerrillas (difficulty 55/100), Half a Life (difficulty 56/100), The Enigma of Arrival (difficulty 63/100), In a Free State (difficulty 64/100), The Mimic Men (difficulty 66/100)

2000

• Gao Xingjian. On ReadingRate: One Man's Bible (difficulty 61/100), Soul Mountain (difficulty 66/100)

1999

• Günter Grass. On ReadingRate: Katz und Maus (difficulty 18/100), Cat and Mouse (difficulty 55/100), Crabwalk (difficulty 57/100), The Tin Drum (difficulty 73/100), Dog Years (difficulty 76/100), The Flounder (difficulty 77/100)

1998

• José Saramago. On ReadingRate: Baltasar and Blimunda (difficulty 52/100), The Cave (difficulty 59/100), Blindness (difficulty 60/100), The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (difficulty 62/100), O conto da ilha desconhecida (difficulty 65/100), Raised from the Ground (difficulty 67/100), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (difficulty 68/100), The Stone Raft (difficulty 70/100), Death with Interruptions (difficulty 71/100), All the Names (difficulty 78/100)

1997

• Dario Fo. On ReadingRate: Accidental Death of an Anarchist (difficulty 47/100), Mistero Buffo (difficulty 57/100)

1996

• Wisława Szymborska. On ReadingRate: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska (difficulty 53/100), Map: Collected and Last Poems (difficulty 58/100), Poems New and Collected (difficulty 58/100), View with a Grain of Sand (difficulty 64/100)

1995

• Seamus Heaney. On ReadingRate: Seeing Things (difficulty 42/100), Death of a Naturalist (difficulty 53/100), Field Work (difficulty 54/100), North (difficulty 78/100)

1994

• Kenzaburō Ōe. On ReadingRate: A Personal Matter (difficulty 47/100), Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (difficulty 54/100), Somersault (difficulty 63/100), The Silent Cry (difficulty 69/100)

1993

• Toni Morrison. On ReadingRate: God Help the Child (difficulty 34/100), Tar Baby (difficulty 46/100), The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (difficulty 46/100), Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (difficulty 52/100), A Mercy (difficulty 55/100), Beloved (difficulty 58/100), Sula (difficulty 58/100), The Bluest Eye (difficulty 59/100), Love (difficulty 60/100), Jazz (difficulty 63/100), Paradise (difficulty 65/100), Song of Solomon (difficulty 68/100)

1992

• Derek Walcott. On ReadingRate: Ti-Jean and His Brothers (difficulty 32/100), Collected Poems of Derek Walcott (difficulty 45/100), Omeros (difficulty 72/100)

1991

• Nadine Gordimer. On ReadingRate: Get a Life (difficulty 52/100), Six Feet of the Country (difficulty 55/100), July's People (difficulty 61/100), My Son's Story (difficulty 61/100), The Conservationist (difficulty 61/100), Burger's Daughter (difficulty 69/100)

1990

• Octavio Paz. On ReadingRate: The Labyrinth of Solitude (difficulty 57/100), Sun Stone (difficulty 66/100)

1989

• Camilo José Cela. On ReadingRate: The Family of Pascual Duarte (difficulty 52/100), Journey to the Alcarria (difficulty 53/100), Mazurka for Two Dead Men (difficulty 61/100), San Camilo, 1936 (difficulty 75/100), The Hive (difficulty 76/100)

1988

• Naguib Mahfouz. On ReadingRate: Sugar Street (difficulty 53/100), Respected Sir (difficulty 55/100), The Beggar (difficulty 55/100), Children of Gebelawi (difficulty 58/100), Midaq Alley (difficulty 61/100), The Harafish (difficulty 64/100), Palace Walk (difficulty 65/100), Palace of Desire (difficulty 67/100), The Thief and the Dogs (difficulty 75/100), Miramar (difficulty 77/100), Adrift on the Nile (difficulty 77/100)

1987

• Joseph Brodsky. On ReadingRate: A Part of Speech (difficulty 44/100), Less Than One (difficulty 64/100)

1986

• Wole Soyinka. On ReadingRate: Death and the King's Horseman (difficulty 54/100), A Dance of the Forests (difficulty 59/100), Season of Anomy (difficulty 72/100), The Interpreters (difficulty 84/100)

1985

• Claude Simon. On ReadingRate: The Palace (difficulty 61/100), The Acacia (difficulty 65/100), The Georgics (difficulty 66/100), The Flanders Road (difficulty 67/100)

1984

• Jaroslav Seifert. On ReadingRate: The Plague Column (difficulty 56/100)

1983

• William Golding. On ReadingRate: The Inheritors (difficulty 60/100), Rites of Passage (difficulty 61/100), Lord of the Flies (difficulty 65/100), The Spire (difficulty 73/100), Pincher Martin (difficulty 77/100)

1982

• Gabriel García Márquez. On ReadingRate: Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín (difficulty 25/100), News of a Kidnapping (difficulty 35/100), Living to Tell the Tale (difficulty 37/100), In Evil Hour (difficulty 39/100), Strange Pilgrims (difficulty 41/100), The General in His Labyrinth (difficulty 46/100), Memories of My Melancholy Whores (difficulty 49/100), Innocent Erendira and Other Stories (difficulty 51/100), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (difficulty 52/100), One Hundred Years of Solitude (difficulty 55/100), Leaf Storm (difficulty 56/100), Love in the Time of Cholera (difficulty 56/100), No One Writes to the Colonel (difficulty 58/100), Of Love and Other Demons (difficulty 69/100), The Autumn of the Patriarch (difficulty 73/100)

1981

• Elias Canetti. On ReadingRate: Auto-da-Fé (difficulty 56/100), Crowds and Power (difficulty 59/100)

1980

• Czesław Miłosz. On ReadingRate: The Seizure of Power (difficulty 40/100), Selected Poems of Czesław Miłosz (difficulty 44/100), The History of Polish Literature (difficulty 55/100), The Issa Valley (difficulty 55/100), The Witness of Poetry (difficulty 55/100), Native Realm (difficulty 56/100), The Captive Mind (difficulty 66/100), The Land of Ulro (difficulty 66/100), A Treatise on Poetry (difficulty 74/100)

1979

• Odysseas Elytis. On ReadingRate: The Axion Esti (difficulty 66/100)

1978

• Isaac Bashevis Singer. On ReadingRate: Enemies, A Love Story (difficulty 51/100), The Magician of Lublin (difficulty 51/100), The Slave (difficulty 56/100), The Family Moskat (difficulty 60/100)

1977

• Vicente Aleixandre. On ReadingRate: Shadow of Paradise (difficulty 64/100)

1976

• Saul Bellow. On ReadingRate: Herzog (difficulty 56/100), Seize the Day (difficulty 57/100), The Adventures of Augie March (difficulty 58/100), Mr. Sammler's Planet (difficulty 60/100), Humboldt's Gift (difficulty 60/100), The Dean's December (difficulty 60/100), Ravelstein (difficulty 60/100), Henderson the Rain King (difficulty 61/100), More Die of Heartbreak (difficulty 66/100), Dangling Man (difficulty 69/100), The Victim (difficulty 69/100)

1975

• Eugenio Montale. On ReadingRate: Cuttlefish Bones (difficulty 58/100)

1974

• Eyvind Johnson — joint winner. On ReadingRate: Return to Ithaca (difficulty 61/100)
• Harry Martinson — joint winner

1973

• Patrick White. On ReadingRate: The Eye of the Storm (difficulty 62/100), The Tree of Man (difficulty 63/100), The Vivisector (difficulty 67/100), Voss (difficulty 68/100), The Solid Mandala (difficulty 71/100), Riders in the Chariot (difficulty 72/100), The Twyborn Affair (difficulty 74/100), The Aunt's Story (difficulty 75/100), A Fringe of Leaves (difficulty 76/100)

1972

• Heinrich Böll. On ReadingRate: The Safety Net (difficulty 40/100), Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (difficulty 45/100), Billiards at Half-Past Nine (difficulty 56/100), The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (difficulty 56/100), Group Portrait with Lady (difficulty 56/100), The Train Was on Time (difficulty 58/100), The Clown (difficulty 78/100)

1971

• Pablo Neruda. On ReadingRate: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (difficulty 51/100), Canto General (difficulty 53/100), Residence on Earth (difficulty 71/100)

1970

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. On ReadingRate: Ein Tag im Leben des Iwan Denissowitsch (difficulty 19/100), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (difficulty 35/100), August 1914 (difficulty 58/100), The First Circle (difficulty 58/100), The Gulag Archipelago (difficulty 63/100), Cancer Ward (difficulty 70/100)

1969

• Samuel Beckett. On ReadingRate: Krapp's Last Tape (difficulty 46/100), More Pricks Than Kicks (difficulty 47/100), Mercier and Camier (difficulty 48/100), Happy Days (difficulty 52/100), Company (difficulty 59/100), Murphy (difficulty 60/100), Endgame (difficulty 61/100), Malone Dies (difficulty 66/100), Worstward Ho (difficulty 66/100), Molloy (difficulty 68/100), Watt (difficulty 74/100), Waiting for Godot (difficulty 74/100), The Unnamable (difficulty 81/100), Ill Seen Ill Said (difficulty 83/100), How It Is (difficulty 86/100)

1968

• Yasunari Kawabata. On ReadingRate: The Old Capital (difficulty 54/100), Beauty and Sadness (difficulty 57/100), House of the Sleeping Beauties (difficulty 57/100), Thousand Cranes (difficulty 59/100), The Sound of the Mountain (difficulty 60/100), The Master of Go (difficulty 64/100), Snow Country (difficulty 71/100)

1967

• Miguel Ángel Asturias. On ReadingRate: Banana Trilogy (difficulty 53/100), The President (difficulty 59/100), Men of Maize (difficulty 65/100)

1966

• Shmuel Yosef Agnon — joint winner. On ReadingRate: A Simple Story (difficulty 47/100), Only Yesterday (difficulty 51/100), The Bridal Canopy (difficulty 57/100), A Guest for the Night (difficulty 74/100)
• Nelly Sachs — joint winner

1965

• Mikhail Sholokhov. On ReadingRate: And Quiet Flows the Don (difficulty 47/100), Virgin Soil Upturned (difficulty 54/100)

1964

• Jean-Paul Sartre — declined. On ReadingRate: The Flies (difficulty 37/100), Dirty Hands (difficulty 39/100), The Words (difficulty 45/100), Troubled Sleep (difficulty 46/100), Existentialism Is a Humanism (difficulty 46/100), No Exit (difficulty 54/100), Nausea (difficulty 59/100), The Age of Reason (difficulty 69/100), The Reprieve (difficulty 73/100), Being and Nothingness (difficulty 78/100), The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821–1857 (difficulty 84/100)

1963

• Giorgos Seferis. On ReadingRate: Mythistorima (difficulty 62/100)

1962

• John Steinbeck. On ReadingRate: Travels with Charley (difficulty 21/100), A Russian Journal (difficulty 25/100), Sweet Thursday (difficulty 28/100), The Moon Is Down (difficulty 30/100), The Red Pony (difficulty 32/100), Of Mice and Men (difficulty 34/100), The Log from the Sea of Cortez (difficulty 36/100), The Pearl (difficulty 38/100), The Wayward Bus (difficulty 38/100), The Long Valley (difficulty 40/100), The Pastures of Heaven (difficulty 41/100), Cannery Row (difficulty 44/100), In Dubious Battle (difficulty 47/100), East of Eden (difficulty 49/100), To a God Unknown (difficulty 51/100), Tortilla Flat (difficulty 51/100), The Grapes of Wrath (difficulty 55/100), The Winter of Our Discontent (difficulty 74/100)

1961

• Ivo Andrić. On ReadingRate: Bosnian Chronicle (difficulty 52/100), The Bridge on the Drina (difficulty 57/100), The Woman from Sarajevo (difficulty 57/100)

1960

• Saint-John Perse. On ReadingRate: Anabasis (difficulty 64/100), Seamarks (difficulty 68/100)

1959

• Salvatore Quasimodo. On ReadingRate: And Suddenly It's Evening (difficulty 55/100)

1958

• Boris Pasternak — declined. On ReadingRate: Doctor Zhivago (difficulty 56/100)

1957

• Albert Camus. On ReadingRate: The Plague (difficulty 53/100), The First Man (difficulty 54/100), Exile and the Kingdom (difficulty 56/100), The Myth of Sisyphus (difficulty 60/100), The Fall (difficulty 62/100), The Stranger (difficulty 64/100), The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (difficulty 66/100), A Happy Death (difficulty 72/100)

1956

• Juan Ramón Jiménez. On ReadingRate: Platero and I (difficulty 51/100)

1955

• Halldór Laxness. On ReadingRate: Salka Valka (difficulty 50/100), Iceland's Bell (difficulty 57/100), World Light (difficulty 71/100), Independent People (difficulty 72/100)

1954

• Ernest Hemingway. On ReadingRate: Death in the Afternoon (difficulty 35/100), The Old Man and the Sea (difficulty 42/100), The garden of Eden (difficulty 44/100), For Whom the Bell Tolls (difficulty 48/100), A Farewell to Arms (difficulty 49/100), Hills Like White Elephants (difficulty 51/100), The Sun Also Rises (difficulty 56/100), In Our Time (difficulty 58/100), Islands in the Stream (difficulty 59/100), To Have and Have Not (difficulty 62/100), A Moveable Feast (difficulty 62/100), Across the River and Into the Trees (difficulty 63/100)

1953

• Winston Churchill. On ReadingRate: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (difficulty 41/100), The Second World War (difficulty 51/100)

1952

• François Mauriac. On ReadingRate: A Kiss for the Leper (difficulty 45/100), A Woman of the Pharisees (difficulty 54/100), Vipers' Tangle (difficulty 59/100), Thérèse Desqueyroux (difficulty 60/100)

1951

• Pär Lagerkvist. On ReadingRate: The Dwarf (difficulty 56/100), Barabbas (difficulty 60/100), The Sibyl (difficulty 62/100)

1950

• Bertrand Russell. On ReadingRate: Why I Am Not a Christian (difficulty 43/100), The Problems of Philosophy (difficulty 49/100), A History of Western Philosophy (difficulty 53/100)

1949

• William Faulkner. On ReadingRate: Mosquitoes (difficulty 35/100), Soldier's Pay (difficulty 37/100), Sartoris (difficulty 41/100), The Unvanquished (difficulty 43/100), Pylon (difficulty 45/100), The Wild Palms (difficulty 49/100), The Reivers (difficulty 53/100), Collected Stories (difficulty 59/100), Go Down, Moses (difficulty 60/100), The Mansion (difficulty 62/100), Intruder in the Dust (difficulty 64/100), Sanctuary (difficulty 64/100), Light in August (difficulty 65/100), As I Lay Dying (difficulty 67/100), The Hamlet (difficulty 71/100), Requiem for a Nun (difficulty 72/100), A Fable (difficulty 75/100), Absalom, Absalom! (difficulty 79/100), The Sound and the Fury (difficulty 80/100)

1948

• T. S. Eliot. On ReadingRate: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (difficulty 30/100), Ash-Wednesday (difficulty 52/100), The Hollow Men (difficulty 56/100), The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (difficulty 57/100), Murder in the Cathedral (difficulty 57/100), The Sacred Wood (difficulty 67/100), Four Quartets (difficulty 75/100), The Waste Land (difficulty 92/100)

1947

• André Gide. On ReadingRate: Strait Is the Gate (difficulty 56/100), The Immoralist (difficulty 61/100), The Vatican Cellars (difficulty 67/100), The Counterfeiters (difficulty 71/100)

1946

• Hermann Hesse. On ReadingRate: Knulp (difficulty 33/100), Peter Camenzind (difficulty 45/100), Siddhartha (difficulty 47/100), Demian (difficulty 50/100), Narcissus and Goldmund (difficulty 52/100), Steppenwolf (difficulty 57/100), The Glass Bead Game (difficulty 65/100)

1945

• Gabriela Mistral. On ReadingRate: Desolation (difficulty 50/100), Tala (difficulty 57/100)

1944

• Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

1939

• Frans Eemil Sillanpää. On ReadingRate: The Maid Silja (difficulty 50/100), Meek Heritage (difficulty 50/100), People in the Summer Night (difficulty 52/100)

1938

• Pearl S. Buck. On ReadingRate: Sons (difficulty 33/100), A House Divided (difficulty 38/100), The Good Earth (difficulty 50/100)

1937

• Roger Martin du Gard. On ReadingRate: Jean Barois (difficulty 52/100), The Thibaults (difficulty 54/100)

1936

• Eugene O'Neill. On ReadingRate: Long Day's Journey into Night (difficulty 53/100), Mourning Becomes Electra (difficulty 57/100), The Iceman Cometh (difficulty 64/100)

1934

• Luigi Pirandello. On ReadingRate: Tonight We Improvise (difficulty 53/100), The Late Mattia Pascal (difficulty 56/100), Each in His Own Way (difficulty 57/100), One, No One and One Hundred Thousand (difficulty 61/100), Henry IV (difficulty 61/100), Six Characters in Search of an Author (difficulty 64/100)

1933

• Ivan Bunin. On ReadingRate: Dark Avenues (difficulty 50/100), Dry Valley (difficulty 52/100), The Life of Arseniev (difficulty 56/100), The Village (difficulty 60/100), Окаянные дни (difficulty 63/100), The Gentleman from San Francisco (difficulty 68/100)

1932

• John Galsworthy. On ReadingRate: The Forsyte Saga (difficulty 51/100), The White Monkey (difficulty 57/100), The Man of Property (difficulty 62/100)

1931

• Erik Axel Karlfeldt — awarded posthumously. On ReadingRate: Fridolin's Songs (difficulty 50/100)

1930

• Sinclair Lewis. On ReadingRate: Elmer Gantry (difficulty 40/100), Arrowsmith (difficulty 45/100), Babbitt (difficulty 46/100), Dodsworth (difficulty 46/100), It Can't Happen Here (difficulty 51/100), Main Street (difficulty 52/100)

1929

• Thomas Mann. On ReadingRate: Herr und Hund: Ein Idyll (difficulty 32/100), Royal Highness (difficulty 42/100), The Black Swan (difficulty 43/100), Tonio Kröger (difficulty 43/100), The Holy Sinner (difficulty 47/100), Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (difficulty 48/100), Der Zauberberg (difficulty 50/100), Lotte in Weimar (difficulty 53/100), Buddenbrooks (difficulty 58/100), The Magic Mountain (difficulty 63/100), The Confessions of Felix Krull (difficulty 67/100), Death in Venice (difficulty 69/100), Joseph and His Brothers (difficulty 69/100), Doctor Faustus (difficulty 83/100)

1928

• Sigrid Undset. On ReadingRate: Jenny (difficulty 39/100), Kristin Lavransdatter (difficulty 53/100), The Wild Orchid (difficulty 54/100), The Master of Hestviken (difficulty 55/100)

1927

• Henri Bergson. On ReadingRate: Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (difficulty 50/100), Creative Evolution (difficulty 60/100)

1926

• Grazia Deledda. On ReadingRate: Ashes (difficulty 41/100), The Mother (difficulty 50/100), Reeds in the Wind (difficulty 53/100), Elias Portolu (difficulty 59/100)

1925

• George Bernard Shaw. On ReadingRate: Pygmalion (difficulty 53/100), Saint Joan (difficulty 55/100), Heartbreak House (difficulty 57/100), Man and Superman (difficulty 58/100)

1924

• Władysław Reymont. On ReadingRate: The Promised Land (difficulty 54/100), The Peasants (difficulty 56/100)

1923

• W. B. Yeats. On ReadingRate: Yeats Selected Prose (difficulty 69/100)

1922

• Jacinto Benavente. On ReadingRate: The Bonds of Interest (difficulty 52/100)

1921

• Anatole France. On ReadingRate: The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (difficulty 51/100), The Gods Are Athirst (difficulty 52/100), Penguin Island (difficulty 54/100), The Revolt of the Angels (difficulty 55/100), Thaïs (difficulty 55/100)

1920

• Knut Hamsun. On ReadingRate: August (difficulty 41/100), Growth of the Soil (difficulty 42/100), Hunger (difficulty 53/100), Pan (difficulty 54/100), Mysteries (difficulty 55/100), Wayfarers (difficulty 55/100), Victoria (difficulty 56/100)

1919

• Carl Spitteler. On ReadingRate: Olympian Spring (difficulty 56/100)

1917

• Karl Adolph Gjellerup — joint winner. On ReadingRate: The Pilgrim Kamanita (difficulty 56/100)
• Henrik Pontoppidan — joint winner

1916

• Verner von Heidenstam. On ReadingRate: The Charles Men (difficulty 53/100)

1915

• Romain Rolland. On ReadingRate: Jean-Christophe (difficulty 54/100)

1913

• Rabindranath Tagore. On ReadingRate: The Post Office (difficulty 52/100), Gitanjali (difficulty 53/100), Chokher Bali (difficulty 54/100), The Home and the World (difficulty 58/100), Gora (difficulty 61/100)

1912

• Gerhart Hauptmann. On ReadingRate: Before Sunrise (difficulty 45/100), The Weavers (difficulty 56/100)

1911

• Maurice Maeterlinck. On ReadingRate: The Blue Bird (difficulty 44/100), Pelleas and Melisande (difficulty 57/100)

1910

• Paul Heyse. On ReadingRate: The Fury (difficulty 45/100)

1909

• Selma Lagerlöf. On ReadingRate: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (difficulty 38/100), The Saga of Gosta Berling (difficulty 51/100), Löwensköld Trilogy (difficulty 52/100), The Emperor of Portugallia (difficulty 52/100), Jerusalem (difficulty 73/100)

1908

• Rudolf Christoph Eucken. On ReadingRate: The Problem of Human Life (difficulty 54/100)

1907

• Rudyard Kipling. On ReadingRate: Just So Stories (difficulty 36/100), The Jungle Book (difficulty 36/100), Kim (difficulty 52/100)

1906

• Giosuè Carducci. On ReadingRate: Odi barbare (difficulty 56/100)

1905

• Henryk Sienkiewicz. On ReadingRate: In Desert and Wilderness (difficulty 33/100), Pan Michael (difficulty 51/100), The Knights of the Cross (difficulty 51/100), The Deluge (difficulty 53/100), With Fire and Sword (difficulty 56/100), Quo Vadis (difficulty 59/100), Without Dogma (difficulty 59/100), The Trilogy (difficulty 79/100)

1904

• José Echegaray — joint winner
• Frédéric Mistral — joint winner. On ReadingRate: Mireille (difficulty 52/100)

1903

• Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. On ReadingRate: A Happy Boy (difficulty 30/100), Arne (difficulty 32/100), Magnhild (difficulty 36/100), Synnøve Solbakken (difficulty 47/100), The Bridal March (difficulty 48/100), The Fisher Maiden (difficulty 48/100), In God's Way (difficulty 49/100)

1902

• Theodor Mommsen. On ReadingRate: The History of Rome (difficulty 59/100)

1901

• Sully Prudhomme. On ReadingRate: Stanzas and Poems (difficulty 61/100)

Questions

Who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2026?

Anne Carson. Of the 7 books by Anne Carson on ReadingRate, the most readable is Nox (difficulty 46/100).

Which Nobel Prize in Literature winner should I read first?

Rudyard Kipling: the books by Rudyard Kipling on ReadingRate have a typical difficulty of 36/100, the lowest of the 95 winners compared. Start with Just So Stories (36/100).

Which Nobel Prize in Literature winner is the hardest to read?

Elfriede Jelinek, whose books on ReadingRate have a typical difficulty of 75/100.

In which years was the Nobel Prize in Literature not awarded?

1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943.

Winners from Wikipedia, checked 2026-10-31.

Other prizes: Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, International Booker Prize, National Book Award for Fiction, Women's Prize for Fiction, Hugo Award for Best Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novel, Prix Goncourt, Dublin Literary Award, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, National Book Award for Nonfiction, Costa Novel Award, Albert J. Beveridge Award, Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction. Every literary prize; every winner of 2026.