Ten Nobel Prize Winners to Read This Summer

Every year, the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to an author whose works demonstrate exceptional merit and optimism. While the Nobel Prize is not awarded to specific novels, plays, essays, or poems, certain works by Nobel Prize authors stand out from the rest of their writing as truly great. When you catch up on your reading this summer, here are some works by Nobel Prize authors to check out.

2000 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian is best known for Soul Mountain, a mountain of a novel in which the protagonist takes a solo journey up the fabled Soul Mountain to reconnect with his roots. The narrative perspective switches from chapter to chapter, and the second person “you” is annoying, until you realize the protagonist is delivering his monologue to himself out of sheer loneliness. This novel stands out for its unique prose style as well as the story.

1999 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Gunter Grass

Does anyone remember that oddball movie about the boy who refuses to grow taller, has sex with his nanny, and carries around a drum to beat at rallies in Nazi Germany? Well, that movie is based on Gunter Grass’ novel of the same name, The Tin Drum. Trust me, the book is much better. In it, dwarf-by-choice Oscar presents a powerful metaphor for Germany itself. The cultural, psychological, physical growth of Germany during the Weimar Republic years seemed to purposefully halt itself with the rise of the Nazi party and languish in petulant, militant childhood throughout the war. Only after Hitler and his cronies fell to the Allied powers did Germany once again begin to make steps toward adulthood. At least, that’s what Oscar as a metaphor shows us. Believe me, this book is no dry history lesson, though, as Oscar’s enfant terrible personality drives the story of he and his family through all sorts of strange scenarios.

1993 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon tells the story of Milkman, a disaffected young Black man who goes on a quest to discover his roots. From the people he encounters in the deep South who view him as not authentically African-American, to the people in his town who resent the posh lifestyle he grew up in, Milkman has a lot to learn about how average folk live and love. The magic and myths he uncovers along the way reshape Milkman’s perceptions of what it means to be human.

1991 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Nadine Gordimer

In Burger’s Daughter, Rosa struggles with living in her father’s shadow after his death in prison. After growing up in a family of protestors during apartheid-era South Africa, Rosa seeks to distance herself from politics all together and forge her own identity. After living quietly and anonymously for some time, she slowly begins moving back into her father’s circle of friends to discover that protest is a part of her life, whether she likes it or not.

1983 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: William Golding

If you haven’t read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, there’s no time like the present. In Lord of the Flies, a group of British prep school boys get shipwrecked on a deserted island and have to fend for themselves. The novel gets darker and darker as they revert to their primitive and violent natures. References to Golding’s Lord of the Flies can be found everywhere from The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio to television’s Lost, and once you read the book you’ll see them cropping up everywhere.

1982 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of five generations of the Buendia family, and how each of the family members dies in loneliness. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work is known for defining the genre of magic realism, in which time spirals in on itself and the strange becomes ordinary.

1971 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda’s poetry has long been popular amongst hipsters, artists, and academics. Now you can join the growing group of cool kids familiar with Neruda’s work. Pick up a volume, any volume. It’s all good, and for poetry, it’s very accessible to those of us who don’t usually appreciate it.

1969 Winner of the Nobel Prize I n Literature: Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is a play in which nothing happens, but is a fascinating and hilarious read nonetheless. The characters kill time and wait around for the mysterious Godot to appear, who never shows up. Why do they wait? What is the meaning of their surreal dialogue? What does it all mean?

Many have guessed at the underlying metaphors, but there is no definitive answer to any of these questions. My personal favorite interpretation is that the characters are waiting for death to come to relieve them of their various ailments and meaningless existences, but who really knows? Read it for yourself to make a stab at interpreting this masterpiece of Absurdist theater.

1964 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Jean-Paul Sartre

Although Jean-Paul Sartre is listed as the official winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, he declined his award. Sartre claimed in his refusal speech that to accept the prize money would compromise his integrity as a philosopher and writer. When a writer becomes patronized (in the old-fashioned sense of the patron-artist relationship), he is no longer free to express his own ideas but that of the established authorities. No Exit and Other Plays is a volume that contains many of Sartre’s important plays, many of which express the beauty of dying for a noble cause in a world with no inherent meaning. No Exit is the most famous of these plays, which depicts hell as being stuck in an escapeless room in which different people have very different ideas about how to make their stay more pleasant. This is where the famous “Hell is other people” line comes from.

Jean-Paul Sartre is best known as the father of existentialism, and his very big book Being and Nothingness gives a great (and thorough) overview of existential philosophy.

1962 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: John Steinbeck

You can’t really go wrong with any of John Steinbeck’s novels; they’re all considered classics in their own right. The Grapes of Wrath (probably the most famous) tells the story of the Joad family, who joins the mass exodus out of the dust and crop failure of Oklahoma for a better life and easier farming in California. They head out in their jalopy, and after many trials and tribulations, arrive in the Promised Land. As migrant workers, they experience the same hunger and poverty as before, only this time on someone else’s land.

This list is by no means complete or comprehensive, just my favorite ten from 1960-present. Other Nobel Prize winning authors include such greats as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Pearl S. Buck. For a complete list of Nobel Prize winners and their bibliographies, visit www.nobelprize.org. Happy reading!