Here is the list of nobel prize-winning authors way back to the beginning.

Do you recognise them?  Have you read any of them?  Do you think they deserved the award?
Do you care?  Do you think it’s important?

The Nobel Prize in Literature – Laureates
2005 Harold Pinter

2004 Elfriede Jelinek

2003 J.M. Coetzee

2002 Imre Kertész

2001 V.S. Naipaul

2000 Gao Xingjian

1999 Günter Grass

1998 José Saramago

1997 Dario Fo

1996 Wislawa Szymborska

1995 Seamus Heaney

1994 Kenzaburo Oe

1993 Toni Morrison

1992 Derek Walcott

1991 Nadine Gordimer

1990 Octavio Paz

1989 Camilo José Cela

1988 Naguib Mahfouz

1987 Joseph Brodsky

1986 Wole Soyinka

1985 Claude Simon

1984 Jaroslav Seifert

1983 William Golding

1982 Gabriel García Márquez

1981 Elias Canetti

1980 Czeslaw Milosz

1979 Odysseus Elytis

1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer

1977 Vicente Aleixandre

1976 Saul Bellow

1975 Eugenio Montale

1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson

1973 Patrick White

1972 Heinrich Böll

1971 Pablo Neruda

1970 Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

1969 Samuel Beckett

1968 Yasunari Kawabata

1967 Miguel Angel Asturias

1966 Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs

1965 Mikhail Sholokhov

1964 Jean-Paul Sartre

1963 Giorgos Seferis

1962 John Steinbeck

1961 Ivo Andric

1960 Saint-John Perse

1959 Salvatore Quasimodo

1958 Boris Pasternak

1957 Albert Camus

1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez

1955 Halldór Laxness

1954 Ernest Hemingway

1953 Winston Churchill

1952 François Mauriac

1951 Pär Lagerkvist

1950 Bertrand Russell

1949 William Faulkner

1948 T.S. Eliot

1947 André Gide

1946 Hermann Hesse

1945 Gabriela Mistral

1944 Johannes V. Jensen

1943 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

1942 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

1941 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

1940 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää

1938 Pearl Buck

1937 Roger Martin du Gard

1936 Eugene O’Neill

1935 The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section

1934 Luigi Pirandello

1933 Ivan Bunin

1932 John Galsworthy

1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt

1930 Sinclair Lewis

1929 Thomas Mann

1928 Sigrid Undset

1927 Henri Bergson

1926 Grazia Deledda

1925 George Bernard Shaw

1924 Wladyslaw Reymont

1923 William Butler Yeats

1922 Jacinto Benavente

1921 Anatole France

1920 Knut Hamsun

1919 Carl Spitteler

1918 The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

1917 Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan

1916 Verner von Heidenstam

1915 Romain Rolland

1914 The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section

1913 Rabindranath Tagore

1912 Gerhart Hauptmann

1911 Maurice Maeterlinck

1910 Paul Heyse

1909 Selma Lagerlöf

1908 Rudolf Eucken

1907 Rudyard Kipling

1906 Giosuè Carducci

1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz

1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray

1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

1902 Theodor Mommsen

1901 Sully Prudhomme