|
France has most winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, staring with poet Sully Prodhomme, the first laureate in 1901. Others include novelist Romain Rolland, Albert Camus, Claude Simon, Jean-Paul Sartre, poet, novelist and dramatist François Mauriac, philosopher Henri Bergson, a philosopher, and more recently Chinese novelist Gao Xingjian, who is a naturalized French citizen. If Russian-born Ivan Bunin, who was awarded the prize while stateless, is taken into account, the total comes to 14.
Despite the high overall count, France failed to produce an indigenous laureate since Claude Simon in 1985.
The U.S. and U.K. ranked second with 11 winners each. This millennium alone, the U.K. has had as many as three laureates with novelist Doris Lessing, playwright Harold Pinter, and Trinidad-born V.S. Naipaul. The U.S. has produced no winner since Toni Morrison in 1993.
Germany, Italy and Spain followed with seven, six, and five winners. Countries with more than two winners include Russia, Poland, Norway, Ireland, Japan, Chile, Denmark, Greece, Switzerland, and Republic of South Africa. A total 36 countries have more than one laureate.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
