Presentation Speech by Professor Lars Gyllensten, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, William Golding’s first novel – Lord of the Flies, 1954 – rapidly became a world success and has so remained. It has reached readers who can be numbered in tens of millions. In…

English Presentation Speech by Kjell Espmark, Member of the , Member of its Nobel Committee, 10 December 2011. Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, esteemed Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tomas Tranströmer is one of the very few Swedish writers with an influence on world literature. He has been translated into some sixty languages, and has been…

Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1936 Eugene O’Neill’s dramatic production has been of a sombre character from the very first, and for him life as a whole quite early came to signify tragedy. This has been attributed to the bitter experiences of his youth, more especially to…

Presentation Speech by Per Wästberg of the , December 10, 2003. Translation of the Swedish text. Writer Per Wästberg delivering the Presentation Speech for the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Esteemed Nobel Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, To write is to awaken counter-voices within…

Presentation Speech by Harald Hjärne, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the , on December 10, 1920 The Swedish Academy, in accordance with the statutes of the Nobel Founcation, has awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1919, which was not awarded last year, to the Swiss poet Carl Spitteler for his epic, Olympischer Frühling…

Presentation Speech by Harald Hjärne, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the , on December 10, 1920 In accordance with the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the Swedish Academy has awarded the literary Prize for 1920 to the Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun for his work, Markens Grøde (1917) [Growth of the Soil]. It would be…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the Salvatore Quasimodo, the Italian poet who has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, is a Sicilian by birth. He was born near Syracuse, to be more exact, in the little town of Modica some distance from the coast. It is not difficult to imagine…

Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the , on December 10, 1923 Very early, in the first bloom of youth, William Butler Yeats emerged as a poet with an indisputable right to the name; his autobiography shows that the inner promptings of the poet determined his relations to the world…

Presentation Speech by Professor Kjell Espmark of the , December 10, 1998. Translation of the Swedish text. Professor Kjell Espmark delivering the Presentation Speech for the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Photo: Hans Mehlin, Nobelprize.org Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, There is one type of writer who,…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the This year’s Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to a writer of German origin who has had wide critical acclaim and who has created his work regardless of public favour. The sixty-nine-year-old Hermann Hesse can look back on a considerable achievement consisting of novels, short…