Ted Giola has compiled "The Nobel Prize in Literature from an Alternative Universe".
Imagine a world in which such honors are exempt from pettiness, politics and tokenism. Imagine a Nobel Prize in which the contributions of Proust, Kafka, Nabokov and Joyce are not forgotten. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature in which genre writers have a chance. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature that doesn't bend over backward to exclude native born U.S. writers (only three honored during the last 52 years!).Let's start arguing:
| Year | Actual Winner | Alternative |
| 2008 | Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio | Don DeLillo |
| 2007 | Doris Lessing | J.K. Rowling |
| 2006 | Orhan Pamuk | Philip Roth |
| 2005 | Harold Pinter | Milan Kundera |
| 2004 | Elfriede Jelinek | John Updike |
| 2003 | J. M. Coetzee | Mario Vargas Llosa |
| 2002 | Imre Kertész | John le Carré |
| 2001 | V. S. Naipaul | V. S. Naipaul |
| 2000 | Gao Xingjian | Haruki Murakami |
| 1999 | Günter Grass | Tom Stoppard |
| 1998 | José Saramago | Roberto Bolaño |
| 1997 | Dario Fo | Hunter Thompson |
| 1996 | Wislawa Szymborska | Stanisław Lem |
| 1995 | Seamus Heaney | Isaiah Berlin |
| 1994 | Kenzaburo Oe | Stephen Sondheim |
| 1993 | Toni Morrison | Ralph Ellison |
| 1992 | Derek Walcott | Bob Dylan |
| 1991 | Nadine Gordimer | Muriel Spark |
| 1990 | Octavio Paz | Octavio Paz |
| 1989 | Camilo José Cela | Theodor Seuss Geisel |
| 1988 | Naguib Mahfouz | Salman Rushdie |
| 1987 | Joseph Brodsky | Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein |
| 1986 | Wole Soyinka | Eugene Ionesco |
| 1985 | Claude Simon | Philip Larkin |
| 1984 | Jaroslav Seifert | Italo Calvino |
| 1983 | William Golding | Graham Greene |
| 1982 | Gabriel García Márquez | Gabriel García Márquez |
| 1981 | Elias Canetti | Elias Canetti |
| 1980 | Czeslaw Milosz | Czeslaw Milosz |
| 1979 | Odysseus Elytis | Philip K. Dick |
| 1978 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Isaac Bashevis Singer |
| 1977 | Vicente Aleixandre | Tennessee Williams |
| 1976 | Saul Bellow | Saul Bellow |
| 1975 | Eugenio Montale | Eugenio Montale |
| 1974 | Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson | John Lennon, Paul McCartney |
| 1973 | Patrick White | Lionel Trilling |
| 1972 | Heinrich Böll | J.R.R. Tolkein |
| 1971 | Pablo Neruda | Pablo Neruda |
| 1970 | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn |
| 1969 | Samuel Beckett | Samuel Beckett |
| 1968 | Yasunari Kawabata | Yukio Mishima |
| 1967 | Miguel Angel Asturias | Vladimir Nabokov |
| 1966 | Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs | Agatha Christie, Jorge Luis Borges |
| 1965 | Mikhail Sholokhov | Jack Kerouac |
| 1964 | Jean-Paul Sartre | Jean-Paul Sartre |
| 1963 | Giorgios Seferis | Giorgios Seferis |
| 1962 | John Steinbeck | John Steinbeck |
| 1961 | Ivo Andric | William Carlos Willaims |
| 1960 | Saint-John Perse | Ian Fleming |
| 1959 | Salvatore Quasimodo | Cole Porter |
| 1958 | Boris Pasternak | E. M. Forster |
| 1957 | Albert Camus | Albert Camus |
| 1956 | Juan Ramón Jiménez | Raymond Chandler |
| 1955 | Halldòr Laxness | Bertolt Brecht |
| 1954 | Ernest Hemingway | Ernest Hemingway |
| 1953 | Winston Churchill | Wallace Stevens |
| 1952 | François Mauriac | Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa |
| 1951 | Pär Lagerkvist | Dorothy Parker |
| 1950 | Bertrand Russell | Ludwig Wittgenstein |
| 1949 | William Faulkner | William Faulkner |
| 1948 | T.S. Eliot | T.S. Eliot |
| 1947 | André Gide | André Gide |
| 1946 | Hermann Hesse | Hermann Broch |
| 1945 | Gabriela Mistral | George Orwell |
| 1944 | Johannes V. Jensen | W. H. Auden |
| 1939 | Frans Eemil Sillanpää | Robert Musil |
| 1938 | Pearl Buck | Virginia Woolf |
| 1937 | Roger Martin du Gard | James Joyce |
| 1936 | Eugene O'Neill | Eugene O'Neill |
| 1934 | Luigi Pirandello | Luigi Pirandello |
| 1933 | Ivan Bunin | Stefan Zweig |
| 1932 | John Galsworthy | Zane Grey |
| 1931 | Erik Axel Karlfeldt | G. K. Chesterton |
| 1930 | Sinclair Lewis | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| 1929 | Thomas Mann | Thomas Mann |
| 1928 | Sigrid Undset | Edith Wharton |
| 1927 | Henri Bergson | Constantine P. Cavafy |
| 1926 | Grazia Deledda | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| 1925 | George Bernard Shaw | George Bernard Shaw |
| 1924 | Wladyslaw Reymont | Miguel de Unamuno |
| 1923 | William Butler Yeats | William Butler Yeats |
| 1922 | Jacinto Benavente | Franz Kafka |
| 1921 | Anatole France | Marcel Proust |
| 1920 | Knut Hamsun | Rainer Maria Rilke |
| 1919 | Carl Spitteler | Thomas Hardy |
| 1917 | Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan | Joseph Conrad |
| 1916 | Verner von Heidenstam | Sigmund Freud |
| 1915 | Romain Rolland | Guillaume Apollinaire |
| 1913 | Rabindranath Tagore | George Trakl |
| 1912 | Gerhart Hauptmann | William Dean Howells |
| 1911 | Maurice Maeterlinck | Henry James |
| 1910 | Paul Heyse | W.S. Gilbert |
| 1909 | Selma Lagerlöf | August Strindberg |
| 1908 | Rudolf Eucken | John Millington Synge |
| 1907 | Rudyard Kipling | Rudyard Kipling |
| 1906 | Giosuè Carducci | Mark Twain |
| 1905 | Henryk Sienkiewicz | Henrik Ibsen |
| 1904 | Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray | Jules Verne |
| 1903 | Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson | Anton Chekhov |
| 1902 | Theodor Mommsen | George Meredith |
| 1901 | Sully Prudhomme | Leo Tolstoy |
1 comment:
The fact that a French-man won the Nobel Prize for Literature will certainly annoy the anglophiles. After all, everyone now accepts that English is the international language.
I apologise for the satire, but speak as a native English speaker. Then, if English is unacceptable, on grounds of linguistic imperialism, what about Esperanto?
Yes Esperanto was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, in the name of Icelandic poet Baldur Ragnarrson.
This is true. Esperanto does have its own original literature. Please check http://www.esperanto.net to confirm.
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