Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow, of the (Translation) Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, No great writer gains lustre from a Nobel Prize. It is the Nobel Prize that gains lustre from the recipient – provided the right one has been chosen. But who is the right one? According to Nobel’s…

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German Biobibliographische Notiz Gao Xingjian wurde am 4. Januar 1940 in Ganzhou (Provinz Jiangxi) in Ostchina geboren und ist jetzt französischer Staatsangehöriger. Er ist Erzähler, Übersetzer, Dramatiker, Regisseur, Kritiker und Künstler. Gao Xingjian wuchs während der Nachwehen der japanischen Invasion auf. Sein Vater war Bankangestellter, seine Mutter Amateurschauspielerin. Sie weckte frühzeitig Gaos Interesse für das…

No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

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I was born in Lübeck on June 6, 1875, the second son of a merchant and senator of the Free City, Johann Heinrich Mann, and his wife Julia da Silva Bruhns. My father was the grandson and great-grandson of Lübeck citizens, but my mother first saw the light of day in Rio de Janeiro as…

Anatole France, pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924), was the son of a Paris book dealer. He received a thorough classical education at the Collège Stanislas, a boys’ school in Paris, and for a while he studied at the École des Chartes. For about twenty years he held diverse positions, but he always had enough…

Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) was born in Guatemala and spent his childhood and adolescence in his native country. He studied for his baccalaureate at the state high school and later took a law degree at the University of San Carlos. His thesis on “The Social Problem of the Indian” was published in 1923. After he…

French Günter Grass est né en 1927 à Dantzig-Langfuhr, de parents germano-polonais. Après avoir servi sous les drapeaux pendant la guerre et avoir été prisonnier des Américains de 1944 à 1946, il a travaillé comme ouvrier agricole et mineur, puis a étudié les arts plastiques à Düsseldorf et à Berlin. De 1956 à 1959, il…