Nobel Prize

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a representative of non-metropolitan French literature. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy (only chance prevented him from pursuing a university…

Ivo Andrić was born in the village of Dolac, near Travnik, in 1892. After spending his youth in his native Bosnia, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he studied philosophy at the Universities of Zagreb, Vienna, and Cracow. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, at…

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia. Raised in a mixed cultural atmosphere, in which Yiddish was the language of the home, and Hebrew the language of the Bible and the Talmud which he studied formally until the age of nine, Agnon also acquired a knowledge of German literature from his mother,…

Yasunari Kawabata, son of a highly-cultivated physician, was born in 1899 in Osaka. After the early death of his parents he was raised in the country by his maternal grandfather and attended the Japanese public school. From 1920 to 1924, Kawabata studied at the Tokyo Imperial University, where he received his degree. He was one…

Eugenio Montale, born in 1896, is one of the few obvious “true masters” of the last fifty years of Italian literature. Born in Genoa into a family of businessmen, he discontinued his secondary studies and started, on a private basis, to study singing with the baritone Ernesto Sivori. But the 1915-18 war (in which he…

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marine during World…

Jaroslav Seifert was born on 23 September 1901 into a working-class family living in Zizkov, a suburb of Prague. He attended secondary school and soon began devoting himself to writing poetry and to journalism. He made his debut in 1918; he published his first collection of poems in 192 1. He belonged to the extreme…

Camilo José Cela Trulock was born on 11 May, 1916, in Iria Flavia, district of Padron, province of la Coruña. Principal works: Poetry: Pisando la dudosa luz del dia (1956; 1st ed. 1945). Novels: La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942), Pabellón de reposo (1943), Nuevas andanzas y desventuras de Lazarillo de Tormes (1944), La colmena…

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also…

Wisława Szymborska was born in Kórnik in Western Poland on 2 July 1923. Since 1931 she has been living in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her début in March 1945 with a poem “Szukam slowa” (I am Looking for a Word) in the daily…