PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARDS LAUREATES FOR LITERATURE
The award will be bestowed to the individual or group of individuals whose literary work represents a significant contribution to universal literature.
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2011
Leonard Cohen
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Considered one of the most influential authors of our time, his poems and songs have beautifully explored the major issues of humanity in great depth.
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2010
Amin Maalouf
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
His work, which has been translated into more than 20 languages, proves him as one of the contemporary writers who has most deeply explored Mediterranean culture, represented as a symbolic space of coexistence.
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2009
Ismaíl Kadaré
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Narrator, essayist and poet, Kadaré represents the pinnacle of Albanian literature and who, without forgetting his roots, has crossed frontiers to rise up as a universal voice against totalitarianism.
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2008
Margaret Atwood
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
For her outstanding literary work that has explored different genres with acuteness and irony, and because she cleverly assumes the classic tradition, defends women´s dignity.
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2007
Amos Oz
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Narrator, essayist and journalist that has contributed towards fashioning the Hebrew language into a brilliant instrument for literary art and for the truthful disclosure of the most dire and universal realities.
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2006
Paul Auster
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
For the transformation in literature that he has wrought by blending the best of American and European traditions, for the innovation he has brought to narrative style in the cinema.
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2005
Nélida Piñon
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Author of an inciting work narrative, artistically sustained in the reality and the memory, and also in the fantasy and the dreams.
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2004
Claudio Magris
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Claudio Magris epitomises the finest humanistic tradition and the pluralism.
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2003
Fatema Mernissi and Susan Sontag
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Fatema Mernissi and Susan Sontag, provide complementary perspectives in a dialogue between cultures.
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2002
Arthur Miller
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
An undeniable master of contemporary drama who has projected modern day society's fears.
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2001
Doris Lessing
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
The creator of an imaginary, everyday world, and her characters, the offspring of contemporary society, are a faithful reflection of twentieth century morals.
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2000
Augusto Monterroso
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
His narrative works and essays create a literary universe of extraordinary ethical and aesthetic depth, highlighted by a Cervantine, melancholic sense of humour.
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1999
Günter Grass
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Outstanding figure in literature, critical humanism and moral commitment in our times.
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1998
Francisco Ayala
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
All of his work is characterised by its lucidity, open-mindedness, and delving into the human condition.
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1997
Álvaro Mutis
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
His literary creation, unanimously recognized as one of the Spanish-speaking world´s highest achievements, links the tenets of Magic Realism with the concerns of modern man.
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1996
Francisco Umbral
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature to Mr. Francisco Umbral, a lively and controversial example of complete dedication to literature.
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1995
Carlos Bousoño
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
An outstanding representative of the first generation of post-war Spanish poetry, Carlos Bousoño is an example of creative development characterised by profound existentialist concerns.
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1994
Carlos Fuentes
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Por his defence, in his writings, of freedom of imagination and the dignity of thought.
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1993
Claudio Rodríguez
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
For his importance in the 50s group of poets and in terms of current young Spanish poetry.
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1992
Francisco Morales Nieva
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
In recognition of his continual work in renewing the finest Spanish theatrical tradition, his creative power with words and the inventiveness of his scenic spaces.
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1991
Puerto Rico´s People
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Whose representative authorities, with exemplary decisiveness, have declared Spanish to be the only official language of their country.
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1990
Arturo Uslar Pietri
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Creator of the modern historical novel in Spanish America, whose incessant and fruitful literary activity has greatly contributed to enlivening our common tongue.
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1989
Ricardo Gullón
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Has managed to make his research work transcend the limits of criticism to become a revelation of the mystery of artistic invention in mankind.
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1988
Carmen Martín Gaite y José Ángel Valente
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Because his poetry, continually evolving from its initial existential beat to subsequent phenomenological inquiry, is a deep interrogation into the meaning of the world.
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1987
Camilo José Cela
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for being the most outstanding figure of Spain´s literary renewal.
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1986
Mario Vargas Llosa y Rafael Lapesa Melgar
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
The Jury has valued his extraordinary gifts as a story-teller, the wealth and variety of his work.
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1985
Ángel González
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Because poetry, through his work, survives the scepticism of an epoch with paradoxical tenderness.
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1984
Pablo García Baena
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
For his perseverance in cultivating an independent aesthetic attitude, and for his influence upon new tendencies in Spanish poetry.
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1983
Juan Rulfo
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
In recognition of the great aesthetic quality, depth of invention, aptness and expressive novelty, as well as his decisive influence on subsequent narrative in his country.
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1982
Miguel Delibes Setién y Gonzalo Torrente Ballester
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
In both cases their capacity of invention and description has been displayed in a masterful control of the Spanish language, which guarantees their survival in the history of Spanish literature.
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1981
José Hierro Real
Prince of Asturias Award for Literature
Which represents a historical testimony and, at the same time, an ethical attitude, both of which are worthy of public acknowledgement.