Curated playlist
Nobel laureates in Literature
- Bob DylanAt a 1966 Manchester concert, Bob Dylan told his band to play loud after a heckler called him Judas.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner never told his daughter he had won the Nobel Prize. She heard it when the principal called her in.
- Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill escaped a prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria by hiding on freight trains. It made him famous.
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- George Bernard ShawBernard Shaw accepted the 1925 Nobel Prize but rejected the money. He said his audiences gave him enough.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre asked to be dropped as a Nobel nominee, then won anyway. His 1964 letter went unread.
- Saul BellowSaul Bellow learned he had entered the U.S. illegally as a child when he tried to enlist. He became a citizen in 1941.
- Albert CamusAlbert Camus thanked his old schoolteacher right after his mother when he won the Nobel Prize.
- André GideA 1924 defense of his sexuality kept André Gide from ever being nominated to the Académie Française.
- Eugene O'NeillPlaywright Eugene O'Neill was born in a hotel room and died in one. His last words were about that coincidence.
- Rabindranath TagoreAt sixteen, Rabindranath Tagore fooled experts with poems he called lost classics.
- Hermann HesseHermann Hesse's biggest audience came after he died. His novels became U.S. paperback bestsellers by the mid-1960s.
- Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett once drove a young André the Giant to school. The future wrestler was a boy in rural France then.
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Solzhenitsyn watched Moscow's victory fireworks from a prison cell. He was a decorated Red Army captain.
- Luigi PirandelloNobel winner Luigi Pirandello gave his medal to the government to be melted down.
- Bertrand RussellAt 89, philosopher Bertrand Russell went to jail for an anti-nuclear protest. Asked to behave, he said, "No, I won't."
- Boris PasternakBoris Pasternak won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature, then his government forced him to decline it.
- Theodor MommsenTheodor Mommsen insisted on checking every Latin inscription against the original stone.
- Ivan BuninExiled in France, Ivan Bunin became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.