Nobel Prize

Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal…

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1911 This year highly competent persons have proposed several men of letters as candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Several among them presented such great and unusual qualities that it has been very difficult to weigh their respective merits. In…

Swedish Academy The Permanent Secretary Press release October 1986 The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986 Wole Soyinka This year’s Nobel Prize in literature goes to an African writer, Wole Soyinka from Nigeria. Now in his early fifties, he has a large and richly varied literary production behind him and is in his prime as an…

Presentation Speech by Professor Lars Gyllensten, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Wole Soyinka, born in Nigeria in 1934, writes in English and is chiefly recognized as a dramatist. His many-sided and vital literary works also include some important collections of poems and novels, an interesting…

Swedish   Ständige sekreteraren Pressmeddelande 11 oktober 2007 Nobelpriset i litteratur år 2007 Doris Lessing Nobelpriset i litteratur år 2007 tilldelas den engelska författaren Doris Lessing ”den kvinnliga erfarenhetens epiker, som med skepsis, hetta och visionär kraft har tagit en splittrad civilisation till granskning”.

My father’s family came from Østerdalen. The first ancestor of ours of whom anything at all was known was one Peder Halvorsen who, in 1730, lived in Grytdalen in the Sollien valley of the river Atna where some men from Østerdalen had been allowed to settle and farm the land. My father’s folk remained there…

Joseph Brodsky was born in 1940, in Leningrad, and began writing poetry when he was eighteen. Anna Akhmatova soon recognized in the young poet the most gifted lyric voice of his generation. From March 1964 until November 1965, Brodsky lived in exile in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia; he had been sentenced to five…

Swedish Academy The Permanent Secretary Press release October 1987 The Nobel Prize in Literature 1987 Joseph Brodsky This year’s Nobel Prize winner in Literature was born in Leningrad and lives in New York. Aged only 47 he is one of the youngest ever to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. A sign of…

  Presentation Speech by Professor Sture Allén, of the , December 10, 1987 Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, A characteristic feature of the Nobel prizewinner Joseph Brodsky is a magnificent joy of discovery. He sees connections, words them pithily, sees new connections. Not seldom they are contradictory…

French Notice biobibliographique Doris Lessing est née Doris May Taylor le 22 octobre 1919 de parents britanniques à Kermanchah en Perse, (aujourd’hui Iran). Son père Alfred Cook Taylor, capitaine de l’armée britannique durant la première guerre mondiale, était employé de banque. Sa mère Emily Maude Taylor avait été infirmière. En 1925 la famille part s’installer…