The Nobel Prize for Literature Is a Lie — And Everyone Knows It

In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre did something no one had done before: he told the Nobel Committee to shove their prize. Not politely, not diplomatically — he simply refused it. His reasoning? The Nobel Prize for Literature had become a political tool, not a literary one. Sixty years later, nothing has changed. If anything, it's gotten worse.

Every October, the Swedish Academy announces its laureate, and every October, half the literary world erupts in outrage. The other half shrugs, because they stopped caring years ago. The Nobel Prize for Literature is supposed to be the pinnacle of literary achievement. Instead, it's become a barometer of geopolitical mood swings, institutional guilt, and the personal vendettas of a handful of Swedish academics who can't agree on what "literature" even means.

Let's start with the obvious: Leo Tolstoy never won the Nobel. Neither did James Joyce. Or Jorge Luis Borges. Or Marcel Proust. The prize was first awarded in 1901, and Tolstoy was alive until 1910 — plenty of time to honor arguably the greatest novelist who ever lived. Instead, the first prize went to Sully Prudhomme, a French poet whom approximately zero people read today. The committee's reasoning? Tolstoy was too "anarchistic" in his philosophy. Translation: he made them uncomfortable. So they gave the award to a safe, forgettable versifier and set the tone for a century of questionable decisions.

The Pulitzer isn't much better, by the way. In 1974, the Pulitzer board overruled its own jury to give the fiction prize to no one at all, rejecting Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" — a novel now considered one of the greatest American works of the twentieth century. The jury had unanimously recommended it. The board found it "obscene" and "unreadable." One suspects they simply didn't finish it. In 2012, the board pulled the same stunt again, awarding no fiction prize despite having three finalists. The literary community was furious. The board was unmoved. Power, after all, is the point.

But here's where it gets really interesting. The Booker Prize, long considered the gold standard of English-language fiction awards, nearly tore itself apart in 2019 when the judges broke their own rules to award a joint prize to Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo. The rules explicitly stated one winner only. The judges decided they didn't care. Was it a bold literary statement? A political calculation to honor both a legendary white Canadian author and a groundbreaking Black British one without having to choose? The cynics had a field day. The optimists called it progress. The bookmakers called their lawyers.

And then there's the Bob Dylan incident. In 2016, the Nobel Committee awarded the literature prize to a musician. A brilliant musician, sure. A songwriter whose lyrics rival poetry, absolutely. But a "writer" in the traditional sense? The decision was a hand grenade tossed into the literary establishment. Some celebrated it as an expansion of what literature could be. Others called it an act of contempt — the Committee essentially saying that no living novelist or poet was worthy, so they'd rather give it to a rock star. Dylan himself didn't even bother to show up for the ceremony. He sent Patti Smith instead, who forgot the words to his song. You couldn't script a more perfect metaphor for the absurdity of the whole enterprise.

The deeper problem is structural. Literary prizes are decided by committees, and committees are political animals by nature. The Swedish Academy — the eighteen members who choose the Nobel laureate — has been rocked by scandals ranging from sexual assault allegations against a member's husband to financial impropriety to plain old personal grudges. In 2018, the scandal got so bad they couldn't even award the prize that year. Let that sink in: the most prestigious literary award on Earth was canceled because the people in charge couldn't keep their house in order.

Prizes also create perverse incentives. Publishers now time their releases to coincide with prize seasons. "Booker-bait" is an actual term in the industry — a certain type of serious, mid-length literary novel designed not necessarily to be great, but to look great on a shortlist. Authors who win major prizes see their sales spike dramatically, while equally talented writers who don't get nominated remain invisible. The Matthew Effect is alive and well: to those who have prizes, more prizes shall be given. Once you win a Pulitzer, your next book automatically becomes a National Book Award contender. The system rewards reputation as much as writing.

None of this means prizes are entirely corrupt. The Man Booker International Prize has done extraordinary work bringing translated fiction to English-speaking audiences. The Hugo Awards have championed science fiction and fantasy when the "literary" establishment dismissed the entire genre. Smaller prizes — the Kirkus Prize, the PEN awards, the National Book Critics Circle — often make braver, more interesting choices precisely because they operate outside the spotlight. When the mainstream prizes play it safe, the smaller ones pick up the slack.

But the fundamental tension remains unresolvable. Art is subjective. Committees are political. Money is involved. Egos are enormous. The moment you try to rank creative work — to say this novel is "better" than that one — you've left the realm of art and entered the realm of power. Who gets to decide? On what criteria? And why should we trust them?

Sartre understood this in 1964. "A writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution," he wrote. He was right. The problem is, writers are human, and humans love institutions. We love hierarchies and rankings and gold medals. We love being told what to read, what to admire, what to buy. Literary prizes exploit this need brilliantly.

So the next time the Nobel Committee announces its laureate and your feed explodes with hot takes, remember: the outrage is the point. The debate is the product. The prize itself is just a golden excuse for us to argue about what literature should be, who gets to define it, and whether any of it matters. And that argument — messy, political, infuriating as it is — might be the most literary thing about the whole affair.