1982 - Columbia - "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts"
Gabriel García Márquez
1988 - Egypt - "who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind"
Naguib Mahfouz
Poland - 1996 - "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"
Wislawa Szymborska
2003 - South Africa - "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider"
J. M. Coetzee
1995 - Ireland - "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past"
Seamus Heaney
1993 - USA - "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality"
Toni Morrison
2005 - UK - "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms"
Harold Pinter
2004 - Austria - "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"
Elfriede Jelinek
1990 - Mexico - "for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity"
Octavio Paz
1992 - Saint Lucia - "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment"
Derek Walcott
1999 - Germany - "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history"
Günter Grass
1989 - Spain - "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability"
Camilo José Cela
2007 - UK - "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny"
Doris Lessing
1986 - Nigeria - "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence"
Wole Soyinka
1991 - South Africa - "who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity"
Nadine Gordimer
1994 - Japan - "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today"
Kanzaburo Oe
1983 - UK - "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today"
William Golding
1984 - Czechoslovakia - "for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man"
Jaroslav Seifert
1998 - Portugal - "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality"
Jose Saramago
2002 - Hungary - "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"
Imre Kertész
1997 - Italy - "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden"
Dario Fo
1985 - France - "who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition"
Claude Simon
2000 - France - "for an œuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama"
Gao Xingjian
2006 - Turkey - "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures"
Orhan Pamuk
1987 - USA - "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
Joseph Brodsky
2001 - United Kingdom - "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories"
V. S. Naipaul