Nobel Books

I've found enough inspiration to attempt to read one book from every Nobel Prize winner in literature. The Nobel Prize was first given in 1901 but there hasn't been a Nobel Prize winner every year and yes, some have even declined due to different reasons. The first female author to recieve the Prize was Swedish Selma Lagerlöf, and she was finally given the Prize in 1909, and after her there so far only been 11 other female authors...

• Sigrid Undset (1928) from Norway
• Pearl Buck (1938) USA
• Gabriela Mistral (1945) Chile
• Nelly Sachs (1966) Germany
• Nadine Gordimer (1991) South Africa
• Toni Morrison (1994) USA
• Elfriede Jelinek (2004) Austria
• Doris Lessing (2007) Great Britain
• Herta Müller (2009) Romania

Some years there have been two Prize winners the same year, but only two authors have declined and 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941,1942 as well as 1943 there has been no Nobel Prize winners (in literature)... And in 1964 Jean - Paul Sartre was aworded the Prize but declined as did Boris Palsternak in 1958. I will still read Palsternak and Sartre because they did get the Prize but couldn't accept it or didn't want it...

I think I will start reading the female authors and then maybe continue with the most famous authors like Rudyard Kipling, Toni Morrison, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemmingway, Winston Churchill, T.S Elliott, George Bernard Shaw and then William Butler Yeats...

After that I think I will take them in order after nationality starting with China or Japan, then Latin America, Africa and so on...

And I will read one book per author if it isn't some kind of series then I will have to finish it... But I still have to pick one book per each author.. but that's a nice kind of chore I don't mind doing it. And just for the record I will exclude the Swedish Nobel authors , at this point anyways since the purpose of this task is to increase my vocabulary in foreign languages. Even though many of the Swedish authors have written very interesting and wellwritten books. But that will have to wait a while.

© Taste of Kimchi, Elle

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