2002 Nobel Prize in Literature

Award

2002 Nobel Prize in Literature

Imre Kertész

"for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."

Date|

* 10 October 2002 (2002-10-10) (announcement)
* 10 December 2002
(ceremony)

Location| Stockholm, Sweden
Presented by| Swedish Academy
First award| 1901
Website| Official website
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The 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Hungarian novelist Imre Kertész (1929–2016) "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."[1] He is the only Nobel Prize recipient from Hungary.[2][3]

## Laureate

[edit]

Main article: Imre Kertész

Before its release in 1975, Imre Kertész worked on his first book, Sorstalanság ("Fatelessness"), for a long time. The novel is about a young György Köves, who is detained and sent to concentration camps but ultimately survives. Kertész wrote about what it means to live with an intellectual death sentence and how to cope with living in a world where so many people have perished. With his books, he identifies with the literary genre known as "witness fiction," in which a trauma is described from personal experience by the author.[4] His other celebrated prose include A nyomkereső ("The Pathseeker", 1977) and Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért ("Kaddish for an Unborn Child", 1990).[4][2]

## Reactions

[edit]

Kertész was a controversial figure within Hungary, especially since being Hungary's first and only Nobel Laureate in Literature, he still lived in Germany. This tension was exacerbated by a 2009 interview with Die Welt, in which Kertész vowed himself a "Berliner" and called Budapest "completely balkanized."[5][6] Many Hungarian newspapers reacted negatively to this statement, claiming it to be hypocritical. Other critics viewed the Budapest comment ironically, saying it represented "a grudge policy that is painfully and unmistakably, characteristically Hungarian."[7] Kertész later clarified in a Duna TV interview that he had intended his comment to be "constructive" and called Hungary "his homeland".[7]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002 nobelprize.org
2. ^ a b Imre Kertész britannica.com
3. ^ Alan Riding (10 October 2002). "Hungarian Novelist Wins Nobel Prize in Literature". New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
4. ^ a b Imre Kertész – Facts nobelprize.org
5. ^ "Kertészkedés". Retrieved 11 May 2014.
6. ^ Krause, Tilman (7 November 2009). "Ich schreibe keine Holocaust-Literatur, ich schreibe Romane". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 31 March 2016.
7. ^ a b "Kertész birthday interview causes controversy". Hungarian Literature Online. Retrieved 11 May 2014.

## External links

[edit]

* 2002 Press release nobelprize.org
* Award ceremony speech nobelprize.org

* v
* t
* e

Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature

1901–1920|

* 1901: Sully Prudhomme
* 1902: Theodor Mommsen
* 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
* 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray
* 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz
* 1906: Giosuè Carducci
* 1907: Rudyard Kipling
* 1908: Rudolf Eucken
* 1909: Selma Lagerlöf
* 1910: Paul Heyse
* 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck
* 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann
* 1913: Rabindranath Tagore
* 1914
* 1915: Romain Rolland
* 1916: Verner von Heidenstam
* 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan
* 1918
* 1919: Carl Spitteler
* 1920: Knut Hamsun

1921–1940|

* 1921: Anatole France
* 1922: Jacinto Benavente
* 1923: W. B. Yeats
* 1924: Władysław Reymont
* 1925: George Bernard Shaw
* 1926: Grazia Deledda
* 1927: Henri Bergson
* 1928: Sigrid Undset
* 1929: Thomas Mann
* 1930: Sinclair Lewis
* 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt (posthumously)
* 1932: John Galsworthy
* 1933: Ivan Bunin
* 1934: Luigi Pirandello
* 1935
* 1936: Eugene O'Neill
* 1937: Roger Martin du Gard
* 1938: Pearl S. Buck
* 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää
* 1940

1941–1960|

* 1941
* 1942
* 1943
* 1944: Johannes V. Jensen
* 1945: Gabriela Mistral
* 1946: Hermann Hesse
* 1947: André Gide
* 1948: T. S. Eliot
* 1949: William Faulkner
* 1950: Bertrand Russell
* 1951: Pär Lagerkvist
* 1952: François Mauriac
* 1953: Winston Churchill
* 1954: Ernest Hemingway
* 1955: Halldór Laxness
* 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez
* 1957: Albert Camus
* 1958: Boris Pasternak
* 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo
* 1960: Saint-John Perse

1961–1980|

* 1961: Ivo Andrić
* 1962: John Steinbeck
* 1963: Giorgos Seferis
* 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award)
* 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov
* 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs
* 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias
* 1968: Yasunari Kawabata
* 1969: Samuel Beckett
* 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* 1971: Pablo Neruda
* 1972: Heinrich Böll
* 1973: Patrick White
* 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson
* 1975: Eugenio Montale
* 1976: Saul Bellow
* 1977: Vicente Aleixandre
* 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer
* 1979: Odysseas Elytis
* 1980: Czesław Miłosz

1981–2000|

* 1981: Elias Canetti
* 1982: Gabriel García Márquez
* 1983: William Golding
* 1984: Jaroslav Seifert
* 1985: Claude Simon
* 1986: Wole Soyinka
* 1987: Joseph Brodsky
* 1988: Naguib Mahfouz
* 1989: Camilo José Cela
* 1990: Octavio Paz
* 1991: Nadine Gordimer
* 1992: Derek Walcott
* 1993: Toni Morrison
* 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe
* 1995: Seamus Heaney
* 1996: Wisława Szymborska
* 1997: Dario Fo
* 1998: José Saramago
* 1999: Günter Grass
* 2000: Gao Xingjian

2001–2020|

* 2001: V. S. Naipaul
* 2002: Imre Kertész
* 2003: J. M. Coetzee
* 2004: Elfriede Jelinek
* 2005: Harold Pinter
* 2006: Orhan Pamuk
* 2007: Doris Lessing
* 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio
* 2009: Herta Müller
* 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa
* 2011: Tomas Tranströmer
* 2012: Mo Yan
* 2013: Alice Munro
* 2014: Patrick Modiano
* 2015: Svetlana Alexievich
* 2016: Bob Dylan
* 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro
* 2018: Olga Tokarczuk
* 2019: Peter Handke
* 2020: Louise Glück

2021–present|

* 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah
* 2022: Annie Ernaux
* 2023: Jon Fosse
* 2024: Han Kang
* 2025: to be determined

* v
* t
* e

2002 Nobel Prize laureates

Chemistry|

* John Bennett Fenn (United States)
* Koichi Tanaka (Japan)
* Kurt Wüthrich (Switzerland)

Literature (2002)|

* Imre Kertész (Hungary)

Peace|

* Jimmy Carter (United States)

Physics|

* Raymond Davis Jr. (United States)
* Masatoshi Koshiba (Japan)
* Riccardo Giacconi (Italy, United States)

Physiology or Medicine|

* Sydney Brenner (United Kingdom)
* H. Robert Horvitz (United States)
* John E. Sulston (United Kingdom)

Economic Sciences|

* Daniel Kahneman (Israel)
* Vernon L. Smith (United States)

Nobel Prize recipients
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