Nobel Prize Snubs In Literature: 9 Famous Writers Who Should Have Won (PHOTOS)

Since 1901, the Nobel Committee has honored outstanding individuals in the fields of science, peace and literature with a medal, personal diploma, cash award, and, of course, requisite fame. In his will, Alfred Nobel noted the fourth prize area to be in literature, and since then, respected writers from broad social, cultural an critical areas have been honored, including Orhan Pamuk, Seamus Heaney, John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison.

Despite the award's status, however, some of the greatest writers to have ever lived never won the medal, including Henrik Ibsen, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, and W.H. Auden. Every award is sure to have some oversights, but when you consider some of the actual winners that took home the prize instead, it's a bit more difficult to view the Nobel's medal as untarnished.

Case in point: Leo Tolstoy lost to Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen in 1902. One of these men wrote works of enduring greatness. The other? Well, the other isn't Leo Tolstoy.

So, in honor of this morning's announcement, we strive to answer: Which writers would you have expected to win a Nobel, but haven't?

We've compiled a list of a few, but who else should be honored?

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Vladimir Nabokov

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The "Lolita" author was nominated in 1974, but lost to Swedish authors Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson. Both Johnson and Martinson were Nobel judges.

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The "Lolita" author was nominated in 1974, but lost to Swedish authors Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson. Both Johnson and Martinson were Nobel judges.

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jjcross123 said on 7 Thursday 2010 pm31 2:33 pm: "somewhat flawed.." LOL..and who are you? You're kidding with this, I'm sure...best laugh all day.

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Never Deserved It A Travesty!

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Comments

[sydferret]

06:41 PM on 10/16/2010

In 1974, the three-member Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction supported Gravity's Rainbow for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, the other eleven members of the board overturned this decision.

[Heavyboxes]

06:29 PM on 10/15/2010

R.L. Stine

[trippingrady]

10:20 AM on 10/15/2010

Henry James

[FS1234]

05:53 PM on 10/10/2010

HuPo presents itself always as rather sophisticated, intellectual but this list is for everyone with a slide interest in international literature a joke ( same as the Nobel Price)

Ever heard of

Brecht (even though not a fan of him), his writing style is superb, he changed the theater like no other and is one of the most played dramatist today

Rilke (one of the greatest if not greatest poets of all time)

Henrik Ibsen ( one of the first writers, who dealt with the destiny of women in a patriarchal world)

Natalia Ginzburg (one of the most important female writers of the last century, icon of feminism (even though she was a moderate person)

Marcel Proust ('À la recherche du temps perdu' is one of the most important narrative works of the last century)

Virginia Woolf (as HUPo is an Americana website I think I don't have to explain why she should have received one)

[FS1234]

06:14 PM on 10/10/2010

I apologize for Proust you included him.

[MickeyMickeyMickey]

09:41 AM on 10/10/2010

Zbigniew Herbert was certainly nominated but skipped over. He may have been considered too cantankerous for attacking the old Communists who sprouted up as "democrats" in postwar Poland. It also may have been considered impossible since fellow Pole Szymborska won.

Ask a serious poetry reader about the Nobel's skipping of great poets and ZH is always on the list.

[Mum]

05:15 AM on 10/10/2010

Graham Greene.

[toldyeso]

09:17 PM on 10/10/2010

i had a teacher in grad school who had studied in stockholm and he said greene was blackballed because he had slept with one of the wives from the nominating committee.

[Lev Raphael]

10:42 PM on 10/10/2010

Would the subsequent committees have harbored someone else's grudge? Ouch!

[Dan Crea]

11:31 AM on 10/09/2010

Roth is an insult to good literature. u just have to laugh when u see the stupid americans complaining that rothshit didn`t won.

[Mum]

05:21 AM on 10/10/2010

Roth is a fine writer, and continues to get even better. I believe that "American Pastoral" and "The Plot Against America" are among the books he has written that students of American literature will be studying 50 years from now. The Library of American apparently disagrees with you: they've already published six collections of his work.

[Lev Raphael]

10:44 PM on 10/10/2010

I'd say "The Human Stain" is his greatest novel, blistering work. And people studying memoir will look to "The Facts" and "Patrimony." I was actually asked to review the latter and felt too intimidated.

[noudidnt]

11:21 AM on 10/09/2010

"Exhibit A for the prize's 100-year snubbing of American writers." Or exhibit A for HP's poor research.

[noudidnt]

11:20 AM on 10/09/2010

This was pretty easy to Google...Toni Morrison won the Nobel in '93. The last I checked, she's an American. She's also an amazing writer.

[Mum]

05:23 AM on 10/10/2010

What was "pretty easy to Google"? Was anyone suggesting that no American has ever won the Nobel for literature? I didn't read that in the article.

[noudidnt]

10:13 AM on 10/10/2010

"Exhibit A for the prize's 100-year snubbing of American writers."

[FearlessFreep]

05:03 PM on 10/08/2010

Graham Greene never won because there was one guy on the Nobel Committee who disliked him.

[Mum]

05:25 AM on 10/10/2010

I'm a Graham Greene fan, and I never knew that this was the reason for his not having won the prize.

[toldyeso]

09:18 PM on 10/10/2010

i had a teacher in grad school who had studied in stockholm and he said greene was blackballed because he had slept with one of the wives from the nominating committee.

[TheWM]

03:30 PM on 10/08/2010

Alfred Doeblin. Robert Musil. John Cheever. Allan Ginsberg. Steven Runciman.

And if we're including living writers, who still could win, Salman Rushdie, Cormac McCarthy and Margaret For Crying Out Loud Atwood!

And no doubt some great writers I've never heard of, the way I never heard of Pamuk and Clézio before the Nobel Prize brought them to my attention.

And no disrespect to Tolstoy, but Mommsen's a great writer, even if the writer of this article doesn't know it.

All in all, though, I think the Nobel laureates are a really outstanding group of authors, with very few exceptions whom I won't name. There's no chance that the Nobel committee will ever please everyone.

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[toldyeso]

09:19 PM on 10/10/2010

every great writer i know and i know a few - think mccarthy is the best writer of our time by far.

blood meridian alone should have won it for him

[evago]

01:34 PM on 10/08/2010

The US IS too isolated and insular. I've long had that complaint. There are many important works in various fields that are not translated here- you are missing out. We should at least be curious about this rather than defensive and attacking.

[Lev Raphael]

10:47 PM on 10/10/2010

Sad but true: only 3% of the books published in the U.S. are translated from other languages, while it's 30% in Europe.

[GoodDay]

08:36 AM on 10/08/2010

The greatest Nobel Literature prize snub is Dawn Powell who certainly out-classed and out-wrote the writers of her time. Gore Vidal is one person who realized the great writer who was Dawn Powell.

http://anokatony.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/the-dawn-powell-revival-continues/

[toldyeso]

09:20 PM on 10/10/2010

love her

[jessiaia]

06:22 AM on 10/08/2010

Interesting list, too bad the compiler didn't stray out of the "white guy" file.

[toldyeso]

09:21 PM on 10/10/2010

oh lord

if your looking for affirmative action picks see

toni morrison.

[jessiaia]

11:04 PM on 10/10/2010

My comment wasn't about the actual Nobel winners but the list of snubs. Also, it's spelled "you're".

[masterofmeander]

11:27 PM on 10/07/2010

"Gore Vidal should have gotten the Nobel years ago."

U-huuuh. It's the "Nobel," not the "Narcissus." And if it's any consolation, Vidal has awarded that one to himself every year since he found his first mirror.

[Balancement]

12:59 PM on 10/08/2010

Well, at least Gore Vidal is a writer and a thinker--neither of which titles you can claim.