As Annie Ernaux wins Nobel Prize 2022 in Literature, a look at the past winners of the prestigious global award

The Nobel Prize 2022 in Literature has been awarded to Annie Ernaux. The prestigious international prize, awarded annually for outstanding work in literature, was first given in 1901 by members of Swedish learned societies. It was first won by Sully Prudhomme, “in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection and a rare combination of the qualities of both heart and intellect”, according to the NobelPrize.org. Interestingly, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 114 times to 118 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2021 for an entire body of work and not just one work. Take a look at the past winners of the prestigious award. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 was awarded to Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents” according to the Swedish Academy; Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah arrives back at his home in Canterbury, England. (Source: AP)

American poet Louise Gluck won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature. According to the jury, Louise Glück won it “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal” (Source: REUTERS/Katherine Taylor)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2019 was awarded to Peter Handke “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience” (Source: © Nobel Media. Photo: A. Mahmoud)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2018 was awarded to Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life", as per the jury statement (Source: AP)

According to the Nobel jury, Japanese-American writer Kazuo Ishiguro's works have come to be a "great emotional force, and has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”. He won The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017. (Source: Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency FILE via AP)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was awarded to American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” (Source: AP)

Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." (Source: AP)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2014 was awarded to Patrick Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation”, according to the Swedish Academy.(Source: © Nobel Media AB. Photo: A. Mahmoud)

In 2013, the Nobel Prize in Literature was won by Alice Munro. The jury statement noted that she is the “master of the contemporary short story” (Source: Photo: J. Munro/NobelPrize.org)

Chinese writer Mo Yan won The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012. According to the Swedish Academy, the writer "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary”. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 was awarded to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. The Academy said in the statement that it is “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality” (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 was won by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat” (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Romanian-German writer Herta Müller “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed” was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 (Source: © The Nobel Foundation. Photo: U. Montan)