Literature

Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the Salvatore Quasimodo, the Italian poet who has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, is a Sicilian by birth. He was born near Syracuse, to be more exact, in the little town of Modica some distance from the coast. It is not difficult to imagine…

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Press release

Swedish Academy The Permanent Secretary Press release October 3, 1991 The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991 Nadine Gordimer “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity” The Swedish Academy has decided to award the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1991 to…

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Award ceremony speech

  Presentation Speech by Professor Sture Allén, Permanent Secretary of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Art is on the side of the oppressed, Nadine Gordimer says in one of her essays, urging us to think before we dismiss this heretical idea about the freedom of art.…

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Biographical

Harry Martinson was born at Jämshög in 1904. He was left an orphan at an early age, and after a chequered childhood, in which the children’s homes and institutions were as numerous as the escapes, he went to sea at the age of sixteen, spending six years of his life on board various ships and…

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Award ceremony speech

Presentation Speech by Per Wästberg of the , December 10, 2003. Translation of the Swedish text. Writer Per Wästberg delivering the Presentation Speech for the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Esteemed Nobel Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, To write is to awaken counter-voices within…

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