Nobel Prize · Curated list
Winston Churchill, Rabindranath Tagore, Ernest Hemingway and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
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Most written-about first. Each description summarises the laureate's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
British statesman and writer (1874–1965)
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, a British writer, military officer and statesman, who led the United Kingdom as Prime Minister in the Second World War, from 1940 to 1945, and a second time from 1951 to 1955. Across some 62 of the years from 1900 to 1964 he sat in Parliament as a member (MP), for five constituencies in all.
Wikidata · Photo: Yousuf Karsh, Public domain
2
Indian polymath (1861–1941)
A Bengali poet, author, playwright, composer, musician, painter, philosopher and social reformer, and one of the leading figures of the Bengal Renaissance. In 1913 he became the first Indian, and the first non-European, to win a Nobel Prize of any kind, and the first writer of lyrics to receive the one for Literature.
Wikidata · Photo: Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, Public domain
3
American author and journalist (1899–1961)
Ernest Miller Hemingway, an American journalist, short-story writer and novelist. Known for a spare, understated style that shaped later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticised for his adventurous life and his blunt, outspoken public image.
Wikidata · Photo: Lloyd Arnold, Public domain
4
Colombian writer and Nobel laureate (1927–2014)
Gabriel José García Márquez, a Colombian journalist and writer, affectionately called Gabo or Gabito across Latin America. Regarded as one of the most important authors of the 20th century, especially in Spanish, he received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1972 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
5
French philosopher and writer (1913–1960)
A French writer, philosopher and political activist. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 at 44, the second-youngest winner ever, and was the first literature laureate born in Africa.
Wikidata · Photo: Photograph by United Press International, Public domain
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6
French philosopher (1905–1980)
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, a French writer, political activist and philosopher, seen as a leading figure of 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. He was central to existentialism as a philosophy and advocated Libertarian Marxism.
Wikidata · Photo: Moshe Milner, CC BY-SA 3.0
7
English writer and poet (1865–1936)
Joseph Rudyard Kipling, an English poet, novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Born in British India, he drew on it for much of his work.
Wikidata · Photo: Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain
8
Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist (1856–1950)
A playwright from Ireland who was also a critic, a polemicist and a political activist. From the 1880s until his death and afterwards, he influenced Western politics, culture and theatre.
Wikidata · Photo: Bain News Service, publisher, Public domain
9
English philosopher and logician (1872–1970)
An English logician, philosopher and social reformer whose full name and title were Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell. He helped found analytic philosophy, is counted among the 20th century's most influential philosophers, and wrote more than 70 books along with thousands of essays, articles, lectures and letters.
Wikidata · Photo: Bassano Ltd, Public domain
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11
Egyptian writer (1911–2006)
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha, an Egyptian writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1988. Awarding it, the Swedish Academy called him a writer "who, through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed an Egyptian narrative art that applies to all mankind".
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
12
Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician (1904–1973)
A Chilean politician and poet-diplomat, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1971. Known as a poet from the age of 13, he wrote in many styles: surrealist poems, historical epics, political manifestos, an autobiography in prose, and passionate love poems such as those of "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" (1924).
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown ( Mondadori Publishers ), Public domain
13
German novelist (1875–1955)
Paul Thomas Mann, a German novelist, short story writer, essayist, social critic and philanthropist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1929. His epic novels and novellas, highly symbolic and ironic, are known for their insight into the minds of artists and intellectuals.
Wikidata · Photo: Nobel Foundation, Public domain
14
German writer (1877–1962)
Hermann Karl Hesse, a German-Swiss novelist and poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1946. His writing was shaped by his interest in the religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions of the East, and by his experience of Jungian analysis.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
15
French author and journalist (1844–1924)
A French novelist, journalist and poet, several of whose books were best-sellers.
Wikidata · Photo: Photographer : Wilhelm Benque. Tucker Collection, Public domain
16
Soviet-Russian author and dissident (1918–2008)
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, an author and dissident, Soviet and Russian, who made the world more aware of political repression in the Soviet Union, above all the Gulag prison system. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1970 "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".
Wikidata · Photo: Bert Verhoeff for Anefo, CC0
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17
Poet, essayist and playwright (1888–1965)
Thomas Stearns Eliot, a playwright, essayist and poet. A leading figure of modernist poetry in English, he changed the art through his pessimistic language, his style of writing and the structure of his verse.
Wikidata · Photo: Thomas Stearns Eliot with his sister and his cousin by Lady Ottoline Morrell.jpg : Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873–1938)…, Public domain
18
Swedish author (1858–1940)
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf, a Swedish writer whose first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, came out when she was 33.
19
Irish poet and playwright (1865–1939)
William Butler Yeats, an Irish writer, poet, literary critic and dramatist, one of the leading figures of 20th-century literature. A driving force of the Irish Literary Revival, he founded the Abbey Theatre with Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge, and led it in its early years.
Wikidata · Photo: George Charles Beresford, Public domain
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20
American writer and novelist (1902–1968)
John Ernst Steinbeck, an American novelist and writer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1962 "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception".
Wikidata · Photo: McFadden Publications, Inc.; no photographer credited; photo likely the work of Sonya Noskowiak, as Steinbeck is…, Public domain
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21
American writer (1897–1962)
William Cuthbert Faulkner, an American writer best known for novels and short stories set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, an invented county standing for Lafayette County, where he lived most of his life.
Wikidata · Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Public domain
22
French author and Nobel laureate (1869–1951)
André Paul Guillaume Gide, a French author who wrote in a great range of styles and on many subjects. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1947.
Wikidata · Photo: Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), Public domain
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23
American writer (1892–1973)
Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck, an American humanitarian and writer. Her best-known work, The Good Earth, topped the United States' best-seller list in both 1931 and 1932, and brought her the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown (see print without name, Public domain
24
Russian and Soviet writer (1890–1960)
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, a Russian and Soviet literary translator, novelist and poet.
Wikidata · Photo: Владимир Савостьянов / ТАСС, Public domain
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25
Irish writer (1906–1989)
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an Irish poet, novelist and playwright. His writing for page and stage, in French as well as English, presents episodes of life that are tragicomic, impersonal and bleak, together with literary nonsense and black comedy.
26
French author (1866–1944)
A French novelist, dramatist, essayist, art historian and mystic. The Nobel Prize for Literature for 1915 was given to him "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings".
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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27
Polish epic writer (1846–1916)
Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz, who also wrote as Litwos: a Polish writer of epics. He is remembered for historical novels such as the Trilogy, and above all for Quo Vadis (1895–1896), a best-seller around the world.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
28
French philosopher (1859–1941)
Henri-Louis Bergson, a French philosopher who influenced both continental and analytic philosophy, particularly in the first half of the 20th century up to the Second World War, and again after Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme in 1966.
Wikidata · Photo: Henri Manuel, Public domain
29
Turkish novelist, academic and Nobel laureate (born 1952)
Ferit Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist, screenwriter and academic, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2006. Among the most prominent novelists of Turkey, he has sold more than 13 million books in 63 languages, more than any other writer from the country.
Wikidata · Photo: David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0
30
German author and artist (1927–2015)
Günter Wilhelm Grass, a German novelist, playwright and poet, and also a sculptor, graphic artist and illustrator, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1999.
Wikidata · Photo: Blaues Sofa from Berlin, Deutschland, CC BY 2.0
Every Wikidata item that has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 30 are shown.
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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