Presentation Speech by E. Wessén, Member of the Iceland is the cradle of narrative art here in the North. This is ultimately due to the peculiar nature and development of the Icelandic community. In Iceland there were no conditions for the rise of the class society elsewhere so characteristic of the Middle Ages, with its…

Swedish Presentationstal av Professor Horace Engdahl, Ständige Sekreterare, ledamot av Svenska Akademien, i Stockholms Konserthus 10 december 2004. Horace Engdahl presenterar Nobelpriset i litteratur 2004 i Stockholms Konserthus. Eders Majestäter, Eders kungliga högheter, Mina damer och herrar, Det första man förundras över när man läser Elfriede Jelinek är den egendomliga, blandade stämma som…

Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Permanent Secretary of the , at its regular meeting on December 14, 1939 The diploma of a Nobel Prize has just been given to you and you have heard the reasons which led the Swedish Academy to accord this distinction to your literary work. These reasons are very briefly stated…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the The Nobel Prize laureate in literature for this year bears a name of unusual sound, which he chose at first to protect himself from the curious. Saint-John Perse is the poet’s name that was to be made internationally famous by a private man who in civil…

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the , on December 10, 1901 When Alfred Nobel decided to make the great donation which has justly received much attention, his entire life’s work led him to favour the study of nature and to reward discoveries in some of the sciences concerned with it. Likewise,…

Presentation Speech by C.D. af Wirsén, Permanent Secretary of the on December 10, 1902 The second paragraph of the Nobel statutes states that «Literature» should include not only belles-lettres, «but also other writings that in form or content show literary value». This definition sanctions the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to philosophers, writers…

Presentation Speech by Hjalmar Gullberg, Member of the , on December 10, 1945 One day a mother’s tears caused a whole language, disdained at that time in good society, to rediscover its nobility and gain glory through the power of its poetry. It is said that when , the first of the two poets bearing…

Presentation Speech by Anders Österling, Permanent Secretary of the John Steinbeck, the author awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in the little town of Salinas, California, a few miles from the Pacific coast near the fertile Salinas Valley. This locality forms the background for many of his descriptions of the common man’s…

Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the , on December 10, 1926 George Bernard Shaw showed in the novels of his youth the same conception of the world and the same attitude to social problems that he has maintained ever since. This provides a better defence for him than anything…

Presentation Speech by Karl Ragnar Gierow, Permanent Secretary of the Translation from the Swedish text Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen, He who attempts to seize in a single grasp the bountiful and very varied authorship of Heinrich Böll finds himself holding an abstraction. Through these writings – begun twenty years ago and culminating in…