Literary Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature Winners
The Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded annually by the Swedish Academy since 1901, is the most prestigious literary honour in the world. Its laureates have included Rabindranath Tagore, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and Olga Tokarczuk — a selection that, despite its controversies and omissions, represents a genuine attempt to recognise literature of lasting value in every language and tradition. The Prize is awarded to an author for their body of work, not a single book, and is often the occasion for English-language readers to discover writers who have long been celebrated in their own languages.
50 winners ranked
Top Countries
Top Genres
All Winners
#1
literary-fiction
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie· 1981
★Nobel Prize in Literature★Booker Prize
Editorial Score100/100
#2
literary-fiction
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy· 1997
★Nobel Prize in Literature★Booker Prize
Editorial Score100/100
#3
literary-fiction
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro· 1989
★Nobel Prize in Literature★Booker Prize
Editorial Score100/100
#4
literary-fiction
The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga· 2008
★Nobel Prize in Literature★Booker Prize
Editorial Score100/100
#5
literary-fiction
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass· 1999
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score98/100
#6
literary-fiction
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong· 2019
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score93/100
#7
literary-fiction
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro· 2017
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score91/100
#8
literary-fiction
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck· 1962
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score90/100
#9
literary-fiction
Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee· 2015
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score89/100
#10
literary-fiction
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini· 2003
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score88/100
#11
literary-fiction
Beloved
Toni Morrison· 1993
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score85/100
#12
literary-fiction
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini· 2007
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score84/100
#13
literary-fiction
My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk· 2006
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score80/100
#14
literary-fiction
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery· 2006
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score80/100
#15
literary-fiction
The Trial
Franz Kafka· 1963
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score80/100
#16
literary-fiction
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison· 1952
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score79/100
#17
literary-fiction
The Stranger
Albert Camus· 1957
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score79/100
#18
literary-fiction
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner· 1949
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score78/100
#19
literary-fiction
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf· 1925
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score78/100
#20
literary-fiction
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy· 1877
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#21
literary-fiction
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky· 1866
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#22
literary-fiction
The Human Comedy
William Saroyan· 1943
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score76/100
#23
literary-fiction
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann· 1929
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score75/100
#24
literary-fiction
Blindness
José Saramago· 1995
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score75/100
#25
literary-fiction
Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse· 1946
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score74/100
#26
literary-fiction
The Famished Road
Ben Okri· 1991
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score74/100
#27
literary-fiction
Snow Country
Yasunari Kawabata· 1968
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#28
literary-fiction
Growth of the Soil
Knut Hamsun· 1920
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#29
short-stories
Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges· 1944
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#30
literary-fiction
The Waves
Virginia Woolf· 1931
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#31
literary-fiction
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende· 1982
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#32
biography-memoir
The Periodic Table
Primo Levi· 1975
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score71/100
#33
literary-fiction
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy· 1869
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#34
literary-fiction
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky· 1880
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#35
literary-fiction
The Autumn of the Patriarch
Gabriel García Márquez· 1975
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#36
literary-fiction
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez· 1985
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score70/100
#37
literary-fiction
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez· 1982
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#38
literary-fiction
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov· 1967
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#39
biography-memoir
If This Is a Man
Primo Levi· 1947
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#40
literary-fiction
The Plague
Albert Camus· 1947
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score69/100
#41
literary-fiction
Independent People
Halldór Laxness· 1955
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score68/100
#42
literary-fiction
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse· 1922
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score68/100
#43
literary-fiction
Narcissus and Goldmund
Hermann Hesse· 1930
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score68/100
#44
literary-fiction
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway· 1954
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score67/100
#45
literary-fiction
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf· 1927
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#46
literary-fiction
Hunger
Knut Hamsun· 1890
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#47
literary-fiction
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Yukio Mishima· 1963
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#48
literary-fiction
The Sea, The Sea
Iris Murdoch· 1978
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score65/100
#49
literary-fiction
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak· 1958
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score64/100
#50
literary-fiction
The Makioka Sisters
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki· 1943
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score60/100



















































