Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Nobel Laureates

Updated October 2024

A Nobel medal held up by someone's fingers

Adam Baker, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Read the nine Nobel laureates in literature in the Words Without Borders archive: Svetlana Alexievich, Jon Fosse, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Han Kang, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Naguib Mahfouz, Herta Müller, Olga Tokarczuk, and Tomas Tranströmer.

A close-up of meat bound into a round shape, wrapped in plastic.

Photo by Bastenbas from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The Vegetarian

In this excerpt from 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature Han Kang’s Booker Prize-winning novel, a man reels as his wife suddenly decides to give up meat.

Translated from Korean by Deborah Smith

Learn

A person lies on a pink couch in a dim theater

Photo Credit: Jim Baldassare, photo of Louis Cancelmi in the US Premiere production of Night Sings Its Songs by Jon Fosse, directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde, set by Lauren Helpern, lighting by Roma Flowers.

From “Night Sings Its Songs”

Leading Norwegian playwright and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature Jon Fosse takes us deep into one fateful night where a young couple tries to reconnect.

Translated from Norwegian by Sarah Cameron Sunde

June-2022-Tokarczuk-Ognosia-Flammarion-Engraving Flammarion engraving, unknown artist

Ognosia

By Olga Tokarczuk

We will need new maps as well as the courage and humor of travelers who won’t hesitate to stick their heads outside the sphere of the world-up-to-this-point, beyond the horizon of existing dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft

knight from chess set

Copyright © Cyrus Chong

The Knight

By Olga Tokarczuk

“Why are you crying?” he said. “Over chess, over that knight?”

Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft

Map of German East Africa

Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

German Medicine

By Abdulrazak Gurnah

Her mother was dead, she knew that, but she did not know why her aunt and her uncle were the ones who took her in.

From “Desertion”

By Abdulrazak Gurnah

He forced himself to take shallow breaths, even though his instinct was to swallow huge heaving gulps to relieve the sense of suffocation he felt in the crowds and the alleyways.

The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt

By Svetlana Alexievich

He was a wildly lonely person. I loved him.

Translated from Russian by Marian Schwartz

Learn

Prelude

By Tomas Tranströmer

Waking up is a jump, a skydive from the dream.

Translated from Swedish by Rika Lesser

On Packing

By Herta Müller

I carried everything I had. It wasn't actually mine.

Translated from German by Donal McLaughlin

From “Étoile Errante”

By J. M. G. Le Clézio

Set first in the village of Saint-Martin in southeast France, then in the refugee camp of Nour Chams, Étoile Errante (Wandering Star) tells the story of two teenage girls on the threshold and in the aftermath…

Translated from French by Justin Goldberg

The Toughest Guy in Utouf

By Naguib Mahfouz

What would you say, Boss, he asked, if I offered you a job that would keep the heat off your back?

Translated from Arabic by Raymond Stock