The Nobel Prize for Literature is granted not for a single book, but for an author’s entire body of work, and hence usually goes to a well-established writer. Here are the most recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature along with the Nobel Foundation's description of the writer.
1. 2008 - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
French writer, "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization"2. 2007 - Doris Lessing
English writer, "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."3. 2006 - Orhan Pamuk
Turkish novelist "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."4. 2005 - Harold Pinter
British playwright "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."5. 2004 - Elfriede Jelinek
Austrian novelist and playwright. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "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."6. 2003 - John Maxwell Coetzee
South-African novelist. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature for being one "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider."7. 2002 - Imre Kertész
Hungarian novelist and essayist. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."8. 2001 - V. S. Naipaul
Trinidadian novelist. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."9. 2000 - Gao Xingjian
French writer. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama."10. 1999 - Gunter Grass
German poet, novelist, and playwright "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."11. 1998 - Jose Saramago
Portugese writer "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality."12. 1997 - Dario Fo
Italian playwright "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden."
