Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow, of the , on December 10, 1970 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Our passports show where and when we were born, facts that are needed to fix our identity. According to a current theory this also applies to authorship. A literary work belongs to its time,…

Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow, of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, Eyvind Johnson’s education – that is, the education provided by society at that time – ended when he was thirteen and was imparted to him at a little village school north of the Arctic…

Presentation Speech by Hans Hildebrand, Acting Secretary of the , on December 10, 1912 There is an old saying that times change and men change with them. If we look back on past ages we discover its truth. We, who are no longer young, have had the opportunity in our bustling lives to experience the…

  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…