The Noble Nobel Project

01. What is The Noble Nobel Project?

The Noble Nobel Project is my lifelong reading challenge that aims to read at least one work from every winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. This spurred from a calling of sorts. You may visit the kickoff post here.

02. When does the project start and end?

The project officially started last January 2012. There is no end to this since new writers are awarded annually. Previously read books from Nobel laureates are counted.

03. How often will you read?

Again, since this is my lifelong project, there are no rules. It depends on the availability of books, my reading speed, and all that. One book per month is a good pace. I intend to stick to that.

And yes, I have other books that I want to read. I do not wish for this project to grandly interfere with my so-called life. Reading should be fun. It should not become an obligation.

04. Will you read more than one book from one laureate?

Sure. There are no limits, but multiple books from one writer would still count as one.

05. Will you read essays, poetry, plays, short stories, etc.?

Yes. This is not exclusive to fictional novels. Any form of literature counts.

06. Who are the Nobel Prize in Literature winners?

Below is the list of Nobel laureates in literature and at least one recommended work for each. The books listed opposite each laureate are the ones that I intend to read. I also think that these are their best works, based on my research. That statement is arbitrary though, and these books are merely suggestions. Note that some laureates may have more than one book listed. This is an indication that I’ve read more than one book from that laureate.

In addition, underlined author’s names are the authors that I’ve read. Links to my write-ups on the authors’ works are also included.

The Nobel Laureates - 20 out of 109 laureates read (Updated last April 2013):

• 1901: Sully Prudhomme – Stanzas and Poems
• 1902: Theodor Mommsen – History of Rome
• 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – Synnöve Solbakken
• 1904: Frédéric Mistral – Mirelle: A Pastoral Epic of Provence
• 1904: José Echegaray – The Great Galeoto
• 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz – Quo Vadis
• 1906: Giosuè Carducci – The Barbarian Odes
• 1907: Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book
• 1908: Rudolf Christoph Eucken – The Problem of Human Life
• 1909: Selma Lagerlöf – The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
• 1910: Paul Heyse – L’Arrabiata and Other Tales
• 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck – The Blue Bird
• 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann – The Weavers
• 1913: Rabindranath Tagore – Gitanjali
• 1915: Romain Rolland – Jean-Christophe
• 1916: Verner von Heidenstam – The Charles Men
• 1917: Henrik Pontoppidan – Lucky Peter
• 1917: Karl Gjellerup – The Pilgrim Kamanita
• 1919: Carl Spitteler – Olympian Spring
• 1920: Knut Hamsun – Growth of the Soil; Hunger; Mysteries
• 1921: Anatole France – The Revolt of the Angels
• 1922: Jacinto Benavente – The Bonds of Interest
• 1923: William Butler Yeats – The Tower
• 1924: Wladyslaw Reymont – The Peasants
• 1925: George Bernard Shaw – Saint Joan
• 1926: Grazia Deledda – The Mother
• 1927: Henri Bergson – Creative Evolution
• 1928: Sigrid Undset – Kristin Lavransdatter
• 1929: Thomas Mann – Buddenbrooks
• 1930: Sinclair Lewis – Babbitt
• 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt – Arcadia Borealis
• 1932: John Galsworthy – The Forsyte Saga
• 1933: Ivan Bunin – The Village
• 1934: Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author
• 1936: Eugene O’Neill – Long Day’s Journey into Night
• 1937: Roger Martin du Gard – Les Thibault
• 1938: Pearl S. Buck – The Good Earth
• 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää – People in the Summer Night
• 1944: Johannes V. Jensen – The Long Journey
• 1945: Gabriela Mistral – Despair
• 1946: Hermann Hesse – Siddhartha
• 1947: André Gide – Fruits of the Earth
• 1948: T. S. Eliot – Four Quartets
• 1949: William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!
• 1950: Bertrand Russell – A History of Western Philosophy
• 1951: Pär Lagerkvist – Barabbas
• 1952: François Mauriac – Thérèse Desqueyreux
• 1953: Sir Winston Churchill – A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
• 1954: Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
• 1955: Halldór Laxness – Independent People; The Fish Can Sing
• 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez – Platero and I
• 1957: Albert Camus – The Stranger
• 1958: Boris Pasternak – Doctor Zhivago
• 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo – Giorno Dopo Giorno
• 1960: Saint-John Perse – Exile
• 1961: Ivo Andric – The Bridge on the Drina
• 1962: John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
• 1963: Giorgos Seferis – Logbooks
• 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea
• 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov – And Quiet Flows the Don
• 1966: Nelly Sachs – Eli: A Mystery Play of the Sufferings of Israel
• 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon – Only Yesterday
• 1967: Miguel Angel Asturias – The President
• 1968: Yasunari Kawabata – Snow Country
• 1969: Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot
• 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• 1971: Pablo Neruda – Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
• 1972: Heinrich Böll – Billiards at Half-past Nine
• 1973: Patrick White – Riders in the Chariot
• 1974: Eyvind Johnson – Here Is Your Life!
• 1974: Harry Martinson – Aniara
• 1975: Eugenio Montale – The Occasions
• 1976: Saul Bellow – The Adventures of Augie March
• 1977: Vicente Aleixandre – Destruction or Love
• 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer – Gimpel the Fool
• 1979: Odysseus Elytis – Worthy It Is
• 1980: Czeslaw Milosz – The Captive Mind
• 1981: Elias Canetti – Auto-da-Fé
• 1982: Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
• 1983: William Golding - Lord of the Flies
• 1984: Jaroslav Seifert – The Plague Column
• 1985: Claude Simon – The Flanders Road
• 1986: Wole Soyinka – A Dance of the Forests
• 1987: Joseph Brodsky – A Part of Speech
• 1988: Naguib Mahfouz – Adrift on the Nile
• 1989: Camilo José Cela – The Hive
• 1990: Octavio Paz – Collected Poems, 1957–1987
• 1991: Nadine Gordimer – The Conservationist
• 1992: Derek Walcott – Omeros
• 1993: Toni Morrison – Beloved
• 1994: Kenzaburo Oe – A Personal Matter
• 1995: Seamus Heaney – North
• 1996: Wislawa Szymborska – View with a Grain of Sand
• 1997: Dario Fo – Accidental Death of an Anarchist
• 1998: José Saramago - Baltasar and Blimunda; Blindness; Death at Intervals; The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
• 1999: Günter Grass – The Tin Drum
• 2000: Gao Xingjian – Soul Mountain
• 2001: V. S. Naipaul – A House for Mr. Biswas
• 2002: Imre Kertész – Fatelessness
• 2003: J. M. Coetzee – Disgrace
• 2004: Elfriede Jelinek – The Piano Teacher
• 2005: Harold Pinter – The Homecoming
• 2006: Orhan Pamuk – The Black Book; My Name Is Red
• 2007: Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook
• 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio – The Interrogation
• 2009: Herta Müller – The Land of Green Plums
• 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa – The War of the End of the World
• 2011: Tomas Tranströmer – The Great Enigma
• 2012: Mo Yan – Red Sorghum