The Nobel Prize 2022 announcements are currently being preconised. The French writer and professor of literature Annie Ernaux has been awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature for her meritorious contribution to the field. The committee declared the names of winners in Physics, Chemistry, and Literature via press releases and their social platforms.
The 82-year-old French Laureate’s remarkable work is closely linked with Sociology. Her work includes Simple Passion, A Woman’s Story, and A Man’s Place, through which she explored the diversified forms of gender and class in society. From 1902 to 2022, Ernaux is counted among the 17 women winners of The Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Here is a list of all the women who were awarded for their contributions to the literature:
1. Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof (1909)
Born in Marbacka, Sweden, Selma was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She published her first novel at the age of 33, it was named Gosta Berling’s Saga. Some of her notable works include Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa Genom Sverige, translated as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.
The rationale for her award was – “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.”
2. Grazia Maria Deledda Madesani (1926)
Grazia Deledda was an Italian writer based in Nuoro, Italy. Born in a middle-class family, Deledda gained recognition for her work around 1896, which includes La Sardegna, Piccola Rivista, and Nuovo Antologia. However, her success had a boost with her published books like Elias Portolu (1903) and Cenere (1916).
She received the Noble Prize “for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general”.
3. Sigrid Undset (1928)
Sigrid was a Norwegian-Danish novelist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages”.
Born in Lillehammer in Norway, Undset started writing at the young age of 16. However, she couldn’t get her work published until the age of 24. A year later, she debuted with a short realistic novel on adultery, which brought her initial recognition in Norway.
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4. Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1938)
Pearl S. Buck, also known as Sai Zhenzhu (her Chinese name), was an American writer and novelist. She was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, on June 26, 1892. However, her parents took her to China when she was a 4-month-old baby. She published her first novel East Wind: West Wind in 1930.
She won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China” in the year 1938. Before Nobel Prize, she was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
5. Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (pen name: Gabriela Mistral) (1945)
Lucila Godoy was born on April 7, 1889, in Vicuna, Chile. Popularly known as Gabriela Mistral, this Chilean poet was the first Latin American woman to win the prize. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature for her “lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world”, in 1945.
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6. Leonie [Nelly] Sachs (1966)
Sachs was born in Berlin, Germany, on December 10, 1891. The German-Swedish poet and playwright received the Nobel Prize in Literature, for her “outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel’s destiny with touching strength”, in 1966.
A spokesperson for the grief and suffering of her fellow Jews after World War II, she gained recognition for her best-known plays and poems. Her notable works include Eli: Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels (1950), Zeichen im Sand (1962), and Verzauberung (1970).
7. Nadine Gordimer Cassirer (1991)
Born in Spring, South Africa on November 20, 1923, Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist.
At the age of 68, she was honoured with the Nobel Prize as a writer “who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity”. Some of her notable works include The Conservationist, Burger’s Daughter, and July’s People.
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8. Chloe Anthony [Toni] Wofford Morrison (1993)
Born in Lorain, Ohio, Chloe on February 18, 1931, Chloe Morrison was an American writer. Anthony received the Nobel Prize in Literature recognized as “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”.
Famously known as Toni Morrison, her journey in the writing world began with her first novel The Bluest Eye, in 1970. Awarded several medals, prizes and honours, some of her notable works include Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Tar Baby.
9. Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska (1996)
An eminent Polish poet, Maria Anna won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality”. She was born in Kornik, Poland, on July 2, 1923.
Most of her works were translated from Polish into other languages. Some of them are Dlatego zyjemy (That’s Why We Are Alive) (1952), Sol (Salt) (1962), and Wystarczy (Enough) (2012). Her poems like Buffo, Love at First Sight, and People on the Bridge were made into songs and films.
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10. Elfriede Jelinek (2004)
Elfriede Jelinek was the holder of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her “musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society’s cliches and their subjugating power”.
Jelinek was born in Murzuzuschlag, Austria, on October 20, 1946. She started her career in writing in 1967. Her notable works include Die, Kinder der Toten, Greed, Lust, and The Piano Teacher.
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11. Doris May Tayler-Lessing (2007)
A British-Zimbabwean novelist, Taylor was a writer under her pen name ‘Jane Somers’. She was born in Kermanshah, Iran on October 22, 1919. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature where the academy described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.
Taylor’s notable works include The Grass Is Singing, Children of Violence series, The Golden Notebook, Briefing for a Descent into Hell, and The Good Terrorist.
12. Herta Müller Wagner (2009)
Herta Wagner was born in Nitchidorf, Romania, on August 17, 1953. Established as an international writer, her work was translated into more than 20 languages by the year 1990. Some of her praise-worthy work includes Nadirs, The Passport, The Land of Green Plums, and The Hunger Angel.
She received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, being described as a woman “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”.
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13. Alice Ann Laidlaw Munro (2013)
Born on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario, Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer. She won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature for stories that were described as having “embed more than announce, reveal more than parade”.
Munro’s stories explore human complexities in a simple prose style. Some of her notable works include Dance of the Happy Shades, Lives of Girls and Women, and The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose.
14. Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich (2015)
A Ukrainian native, Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist, and oral historian. She writes in the Russian language. As a first writer from Belarus, Alexievich received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”.
Some of her notable works include War’s Unwomanly Face, The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories, Enchanted by Death, and Chernobyl Prayer. She is also the first journalist to receive the Nobel Prize.
15. Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk-Fingas (2018)
Among her generation of successful authors in Poland, Olga is a renowned Polish writer, public intellectual, and activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018, “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”.
Olga is a clinical psychologist from the University of Warsaw. She is acclaimed for her mythical tone of writing. Her works include The Primeval and Other Times, Flights, and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
16. Louise Elisabeth Glück-Dranow (2020)
Raised on Long Island, Louise Gluck was born in New York City on April 23, 1943. During her high school days, she suffered from anorexia nervosa but later, she overcame it. She is often acclaimed as an autobiographical poet. Her most notable works include The Triumph of Achilles and The Wild Iris.
Elisabeth was 77-year-old when she won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, for her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”.
