JEWISH NOBEL
PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE
(13% of world total, 38% of US total)
JINFO.ORG
Listed below are
recipients of the Nobel Prize in literature who were, or
are, Jewish (or of half-Jewish descent, as noted).
- Paul von Heyse #,1 (1910)
- Henri Bergson # (1927)
- Boris Pasternak # (1958)
- Shmuel Agnon # (1966)
- Nelly Sachs # (1966)
- Saul Bellow # (1976)
- Isaac Bashevis Singer # (1978)
- Elias Canetti # (1981)
- Joseph Brodsky # (1987)
- Nadine Gordimer # (1991)
- Imre Kertész 2 (2002)
- Elfriede Jelinek 3 (2004)
- Harold Pinter 4 (2005)
- Patrick Modiano 5
(2014)
- Bob Dylan 6 (2016)
- Louise Glück 7
(2020)
NOTES
# Encyclopaedia Judaica
(1997 CD ROM edition). (This source was listed by the Library
Journal as one of its "Top 50 Reference Works of the
Millennium.")
1. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see first paragraph
of autobiography: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1910/heyse-autobio.html.
2. See first paragraph
of biography: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2002/kertesz-bio.html.
3. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. In a 1998
interview, Jelinek stated "Mein Vater
war auch Jude"; see fourth question in interview:
http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/98/12/jellinek.htm
and
first paragraph of bio-bibliographical notes: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2004/bio-bibl.html.
4. See first paragraph of bio-bibliographical notes: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/bio-bibl.html.
In Conversations with
Pinter, by Mel Gussow (Grove, New York, 1996,
p.103), Pinter describes his mother and father as "very
solid, very respectable, Jewish, lower middle class
people."
5. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. See, e.g., Jewish
Writers of the Twentieth Century, edited by Sorrel
Kerbel (Taylor and Francis, New York and London, 2003, pp.
383-384).
6. Born Robert Zimmerman. See Encyclopaedia
Judaica: Second Edition (Thomson Gale/Macmillan
Reference, Farmington Hills, MI, 2007, Vol. 6, pp. 78-79).
7.See Encyclopaedia
Judaica: Second Edition (Thomson Gale/Macmillan
Reference, Farmington Hills, MI, 2007, Vol. 7, p. 643).