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Nobel Laureates

Updated October 2023

A Nobel medal held up by someone's fingers
Adam Baker, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel laureates in literature from the Words Without Borders archive.

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”
By Jon Fosse
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