Nobel Prize for Literature 2001 - Press Release Press Release The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 V. S. Naipaul The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 V. S. Naipaul The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2001 is awarded to the British writer, born in Trinidad, V. S. Naipaul “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”. V. S. Naipaul is a literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice. Singularly unaffected by literary fashion and models he has wrought existing genres into a style of his own, in which the customary distinctions between fiction and non-fiction are of subordinate importance. Naipaul’s literary domain has extended far beyond the West Indian island of Trinidad, his first subject, and now encompasses India, Africa, America from south to north, the Islamic countries of Asia and, not least, England. Naipaul is Conrad’s heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings.

His authority as a narrator is grounded in his memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished. The farcical yarns in his first work, The Mystic Masseur, and the short stories in Miguel Street with their blend of Chekhov and calypso established Naipaul as a humorist and a portrayer of street life. He took a giant stride with A House for Mr. Biswas, one of those singular novels that seem to constitute their own complete universes, in this case a miniature India on the periphery of the British Empire, the scene of his father’s circumscribed existence. In allowing peripheral figures their place in the momentousness of great literature, Naipaul reverses normal perspectives and denies readers at the centre their protective detachment. This principle was made to serve in a series of novels in which, despite the increasingly documentary tone, the characters did not therefore become less colourful. Fictional narratives, autobiography and documentaries have merged in Naipaul’s writing without it always being possible to say which element dominates. In his masterpiece The Enigma of Arrival Naipaul visits the reality of England like an anthropologist studying some hitherto unexplored native tribe deep in the jungle.

With apparently short-sighted and random observations he creates an unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the demise of European neighbourhoods. Naipaul has drawn attention to the novel’s lack of universality as a form, that it presupposes an inviolate human world of the kind that has been shattered for conquered peoples. He began to experience the inadequacy of fiction while he was working on The Loss of El Dorado, in which after extensive study of the archives he described the appalling colonial history of Trinidad. He found that he had to cling to the authenticity of the details and the voices and abstain from mere fictionalisation while at the same time continuing to render his material in the form of literature. His travel books allow witnesses to testify at every turn, not least in his powerful description of the eastern regions of the Islamic world, Beyond Belief. The author’s empathy finds expression in the acuity of his ear. Naipaul is a modern philosophe, carrying on the tradition that started originally with Lettres persanes and Candide. In a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony.

The Swedish Academy Share this: To cite this page MLA style: "Nobel Prize for Literature 2001 - Press Release". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 17 Jan 2017. < Nobel Prizes: Year In Review 2001 | Britannica.com Nobel Prizes: Year In Review 2001 Written By: Originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year. Presented as archival content. Prize for Peace Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent The 2001 Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to the United Nations (UN) and to its secretary-general, Kofi Annan. In announcing the prize in its centenary year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said of the UN, “Today the organization is at the forefront of efforts to achieve peace and security in the world.” Annan, who took office on Jan. 1, 1997, and who in 2001 was elected to a second term, was praised both for carrying out administrative reforms and for promoting the goals of the UN. The UN charter came into effect on Oct. 24, 1945, in San Francisco.

With its headquarters in New York City, the UN and its agencies and affiliates made up a worldwide organization of more than 50,000 employees involved not only in the settlement of disputes but also in promoting advances in fields such as health, social welfare, and finance. Through the 1980s the UN often was the victim of Cold War politics, particularly between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Nonetheless, it sometimes played an important role in armed conflicts, as in the Korean War (1950–53), and served as an important forum in confrontations, as with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. During the 1990s the UN expanded its role in helping to settle regional wars, particularly in the Balkans, in East Timor, and in parts of Africa. Although this was the first Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to the UN, several of its agencies had received the honour: the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1954 and 1981; the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1965; and United Nations peacekeeping forces in 1988.

The International Labour Organisation, an affiliated agency, won the prize in 1969. Annan was praised by the Nobel Committee as being “pre-eminent in bringing new life” to the UN. He was born on April 18, 1938, in Kumasi, Gold Coast (now Ghana), and was educated largely in Kumasi and in the U.S. He earned a degree in economics from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn., in 1961 and a master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. He began working for the UN in 1962 as a budget officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva and, except for the years 1974–76, made his career with the UN. During the 1990s he was an assistant and then an undersecretary-general, performing duties that included overseeing peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Annan was elected secretary-general, the first to come from the ranks of the staff, with a mandate to streamline the UN bureaucracy. He also forcefully promoted human rights and programs to combat AIDS and terrorism.

He took an active role in negotiations when necessary but also was forthright in criticizing members when he felt it his duty to do so. Annan was the second UN secretary-general to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Dag Hammarskjöld was awarded the prize posthumously in 1961, after he had died in a plane crash earlier in the year. Robert Rauch Prize for Economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded in 2001 to Americans George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, whose research and analyses had laid the foundations for the theory of markets with asymmetrical information. Their analysis of markets in which one side had better information than the other was fundamental to modern microeconomic theory and changed economists’ perceptions of how markets work. It enabled an understanding of the phenomena in real markets that could not be explained by traditional neoclassical theory. The application of the models was wide ranging—from economic development and labour markets to traditional agricultural and modern financial markets. These models were also used to explain the existence of certain economic and social institutions and the introduction of contracts to limit the negative effect of information asymmetries.

President of the United States: Fact or Fiction? Akerlof received the Nobel for his exposition on markets with asymmetrical information, in which sellers of a product have more information than buyers about the product’s quality. He demonstrated that this could lead to “adverse selection” of poor-quality products such as—in his well-cited example of a secondhand-car market—a defective car known as a “lemon.” In his 1970 seminal work “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” Akerlof explained how private or asymmetrical information prevents markets from functioning efficiently and examined the consequences of this. Akerlof suggested that many economic institutions had emerged in the market in order to protect themselves from the consequences of adverse selection, including secondhand-car dealers who offered guarantees to increase consumer confidence. In the context of less-developed countries, Akerlof’s analysis explained that interest rates were often excessive because moneylenders lacked adequate information on the borrower’s creditworthiness.

Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Spence developed the theory of “signaling” to show how the better informed in the market communicate their information to the less-well-informed to avoid the problems associated with adverse selection. In his 1973 seminal paper “Job Market Signaling,” Spence demonstrated how education was used as a signal in the labour market. While an employer could not observe the productivity of a potential employee, he could assume that the cost of achieving a freely available educational standard—in terms of effort, expense, or time—was less for a productive than an unproductive person. For signaling to work, its cost had to differ widely between the job candidates. Stiglitz concentrated on what could be done by ill-informed individuals and operators to improve their position in a market with asymmetrical information. He found that they could extract information indirectly through screening and self-selection.

“Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information,” a classic 1976 article on adverse selection written by Stiglitz with Michael Rothschild, examined the insurance market in which the (uninformed) companies lacked information on the individual risk situation of their (informed) customers. The analysis showed that by offering incentives to policyholders to disclose information, insurance companies were able to divide them into different risk classes. The use of a screening process enabled companies to issue a choice of policy contracts in which lower premiums could be exchanged for higher deductibles. Trending Topics Eyjafjallajökull volcano Akerlof was born on June 17, 1940, in New Haven, Conn., and was educated at Yale University (B.A., 1962) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1966). In 1966 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Goldman Professor of Economics from 1980.

Spence was born in 1943 in Montclair, N.J., and was educated at Princeton University (B.A., 1966), the University of Oxford (B.A., M.A., 1968), and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1972). He taught economics at Harvard and at Stanford University, where in 1990 he became the Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of the Graduate School of Business. Stiglitz was born on Feb. 9, 1943, in Gary, Ind., and was educated at Amherst (Mass.) College (B.A., 1964) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1967), where he began his teaching career in 1966. He later became a professor at Yale, Oxford, Stanford, and Princeton. From 2001 he was professor of economics, business, and international affairs at Columbia University, New York City. Stiglitz was an active member of Pres. Bill Clinton’s economic team; a member of the U.S.

Council of Economic Advisers (1993–97), of which he became chairman in June 1995; and senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank (1997–2000). Janet H. Clark Prize for Literature Trinidadian-born British writer V.S. Naipaul—who merged fiction and reminiscence as well as memoir and reportage to create a compelling oeuvre that reflected his intimate journey through memory and experience toward the realization of self-discovery and truth—was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature. The author of more than 25 volumes of fiction, history, travelogue, and journalism, Naipaul was an astute and often condescending observer of a world he perceived to be governed by class consciousness, prejudice, and political injustice. His penetrating, nihilistic vision of contemporary society encompassed both the dark and often brutal realities of colonial imperialism and postcolonial chaos and diaspora.

His was an uncompromising voice for the oppressed, disenfranchised, and stateless, who, like himself, migrated from place to place in search of purpose and acceptance in what he deemed “borrowed cultures.” A descendant of Hindu immigrants from northern India whose Brahmin grandfather immigrated to the Caribbean as an indentured labourer, Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born Aug. 17, 1932, in Chaguanas, Trinidad. His father, affectionately portrayed in the highly acclaimed A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), was a local journalist with literary aspirations of his own and instilled in both Naipaul and his younger brother Shiva, also a celebrated writer, an appreciation for literature and respect for the expressiveness and eloquence of language. Educated in Chaguanas and later in Port of Spain, Naipaul at the age of 18 left Trinidad for Great Britain to continue his studies at University College, Oxford. After graduating with honours in English, he became a freelance journalist with the BBC in London.

In 1955 Naipaul married, and in the following year he returned briefly to Trinidad before settling permanently in England, first in London and then in Salisbury, Wiltshire, near Stonehenge. Early in his career, Naipaul was identified with the emerging generation of politicized West Indian authors—among them Edgar Mittelhölzer, Samuel Selvon, George Lamming, and Derek Walcott—who sought to create a decolonization of English literature. Naipaul’s first published novel, The Mystic Masseur (1957), was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and combined ethnic humour and layered cynicism to create a satiric composite of Trinidadian society. The condition of the marginalized West Indian also informed both his second novel, The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), and Miguel Street (1959), a collection of interrelated stories about life in Port of Spain. Naipaul first gained critical recognition with A House for Mr. Biswas, which reflected the struggle of a modern-day West Indian Everyman forced to endure the humiliation and anguish of servitude and exploitation while desperately searching for both self-preservation and identity.

In 1962 Naipaul released his first work of nonfiction, The Middle Passage, which provided an acerbic and often insolent assessment of European colonialism in the West Indies and South America. The following year Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion, the first of his novels with an English setting, was published. These were followed by the publication of An Area of Darkness (1964), the first volume in his so-called “India” trilogy, which also includes India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). Naipaul broadened his literary perspective of cultural dislocation with The Mimic Men (1967), which was followed by one of his best-known fictional works—the Booker Prize-winning In a Free State (1971), an experimental novel merging several genres to examine the pervasive decay of postcolonial disorder and disillusionment. The destructive and grim reality of postindependence upheaval was further explored in Guerrillas (1975), the first of his works to receive widespread attention in the U.S., and in A Bend in the River (1979).

Naipaul continued to delve into the boundaries between fiction and autobiography with The Enigma of Arrival (1987), a personal reflection on the condition of colonialism and the postcolonial experience. After being knighted in 1990, Naipaul received the first David Cohen British Literature Prize in 1993 for “lifetime achievement by a living British writer.” He remained productive throughout the 1990s, enhancing his reputation with the publication in 1994 of the meditative novel A Way in the World and the controversial account of Islamic fundamentalism Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998). Following the death in 1996 of his first wife, Naipaul remarried that year. In his latest work, Half a Life (2001), Naipaul returned to the themes of his earlier fiction—the postcolonial legacy of displacement and exile. Steven R. Serafin Prize for Chemistry The syntheses of many important chemicals rely on catalysts, substances that speed up reactions without being consumed themselves.

The 2001 Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to three scientists who developed the first chiral catalysts, which drive chemical reactions toward just one of two possible outcomes. Their catalysts found almost immediate use, most significantly in the manufacture of new drugs but also in the production of flavouring agents, insecticides, and other industrial products. One-half of the $943,000 prize was shared by William S. Knowles, formerly of the Monsanto Co., St. Louis, Mo., and Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya (Japan) University. The other half went to K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif. Knowles was born on June 1, 1917, in Taunton, Mass. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York City, in 1942, after which he conducted research at Monsanto until his retirement in 1986. Noyori was born on Sept. 3, 1938, in Kobe, Japan. He took a Ph.D. from Kyoto University (1967) and in 1968 joined the faculty of Nagoya University.

In 2000 he assumed directorship of the university’s Research Center for Materials Science. Sharpless was born on April 28, 1941, in Philadelphia. He received a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1968) and, after postdoctoral work, joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1970. In 1990 he became W.M. Keck Professor of Chemistry at Scripps. Many molecules are chiral—they exist in two structural forms (enantiomers) that are nonsuperimposable mirror images, like a pair of human hands. In humans and other living things, one chiral form of a molecule often predominates in the biochemical activities inside cells. For instance, natural sugars, which are the building blocks of carbohydrates, are almost exclusively right-handed. Natural amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are almost all left-handed. Likewise, the receptors, enzymes, and other cellular components made from these molecules are chiral and tend to interact selectively with only one of two enantiomers of a given substance. For many drugs, however, traditional laboratory synthesis results in a mixture of enantiomers.

One form usually has the desired effect, binding with a cellular receptor or interacting in some other way. The other form may be inactive or cause undesirable side effects. The latter happened with the drug thalidomide, prescribed to pregnant women for nausea beginning in the late 1950s. One enantiomer relieved nausea, whereas the other caused birth defects. Traditional syntheses for thalidomide and other drugs are symmetrical in the sense that they produce equal amounts of both enantiomers. For decades chemists had tried to develop asymmetrical methods that would yield more of one enantiomer or even one enantiomer exclusively. The three Nobel laureates developed asymmetrical catalysts for two important classes of reactions in organic chemistry, hydrogenations and oxidations. In the early 1960s scientists did not know if catalytic asymmetrical hydrogenation even was possible. In many important syntheses, hydrogenation involves the addition of hydrogen to two atoms that are joined by a double bond in a molecular structure. An asymmetrical hydrogenation would do so in a way that produced more of one enantiomer than the other.

The breakthrough came in 1968 when Knowles, working at Monsanto, developed the first chiral catalyst for an asymmetrical hydrogenation reaction. Knowles was seeking an industrial synthesis for the drug l-dopa, which later became a mainstay for treating Parkinson disease. Variations of the new catalyst found almost immediate application in producing very pure preparations of the desired l-dopa enantiomer. Beginning in the 1980s Noyori, working at Nagoya University, developed more general asymmetrical hydrogen catalysts. They had broader applications, could produce larger proportions of the desired enantiomer, and were suitable for large-scale industrial applications. Noyori’s catalysts found wide use in the synthesis of antibiotics and advanced materials. Sharpless addressed the great need for chiral catalysts for oxidations, another broad family of chemical reactions. Atoms, ions, or molecules that undergo oxidation in reactions lose electrons and, in so doing, increase their functionality, or capacity to form chemical bonds. In 1980, working at MIT, Sharpless carried out key experiments that led to a practical method based on catalytic asymmetrical oxidation for producing epoxide compounds, used in the synthesis of heart medicines such as beta blockers and other products.

As was expressed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded the chemistry prize, “Many scientists have identified Sharpless’ epoxidation as the most important discovery in the field of synthesis during the past few decades.” Michael Woods Prize for Physics Three scientists who first created a new ultracold state of matter that Albert Einstein had predicted more than 70 years earlier won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics. Eric A. Cornell of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Carl E. Wieman of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shared the $943,000 prize for their production in 1995 of the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Cornell was born on Dec. 19, 1961, in Palo Alto., Calif. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT (1990) and, after postdoctoral work, joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in 1992. That same year he became a staff scientist at NIST.

Wieman was born on March 26, 1951, in Corvallis, Ore. After earning a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1977), he taught and conducted research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor until 1984, when he moved to the University of Colorado. Both Cornell and Wieman held positions as fellows of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), a research and teaching centre operated by NIST and the University of Colorado. Ketterle was born on Oct. 21, 1957, in Heidelberg, Ger. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching (1986). After postdoctoral work he joined the faculty at MIT in 1993. He also served as a principal investigator with the Center for Ultracold Atoms, a joint research institution sponsored by MIT, Harvard University, and the National Science Foundation. Ketterle was a German citizen with permanent residency in the U.S. Generations of physicists had dreamed of creating a BEC since the concept for this exotic state of matter first emerged in the 1920s.

In 1924 the Indian physicist Satyendra Bose made important theoretical calculations about the nature of light particles, or photons. Physicists already had recognized that the propagation of light can be thought to consist of discrete packets of energy traveling through space. Bose presented an alternative derivation of a law about the behaviour of photons developed earlier by the German physicist Max Planck. The kinds of particles that fitted Bose’s description eventually were named bosons in his honour. Bosons have a property that allows them to congregate without number, occupying the same quantum state at the same time. Einstein translated Bose’s work into German, submitted it to a physics journal, and started working on the concept himself. Bose’s work focused on particles, such as photons, that have no rest mass. Einstein extended it to particles with mass, such as the atoms in a dilute gas. He predicted that if a sufficient number of such atoms get close enough together and move slowly enough, they will undergo a phase transition into a new state. That new state of matter became known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Physicists recognized the keys to achieving a BEC.

The major challenge was to make the gas very cold, about a tenth of a millionth of a degree of absolute zero (−273.15 °C, or −459.67 °F), to slow the motion of the atoms without causing them to condense to a liquid. Atoms in gases usually move in an uncoordinated way, ricocheting off each other and nearby objects. Under the conditions described by Einstein, however, the atoms “sense” one another and transform from a mass of uncoordinated individuals to a coherent group that acts like a single giant atom. Cornell and Wieman, working at the University of Colorado in 1995, used a combination of laser and magnetic techniques to slow, trap, and cool about 2,000 rubidium atoms to form a BEC. Ketterle, working independently at MIT, created a BEC from sodium atoms. Ketterle’s BEC, which comprised a much larger sample of atoms, was used to carry out additional studies of the condensate, including an interference experiment that provided the first direct evidence of the coherent nature of a BEC.

Those first successes led to a flurry of experiments in which physicists expanded the roster of BEC-forming gases and used BECs to produce “atom lasers” that emit coherent beams of matter rather than light. In 2001 about 20 groups were conducting BEC experiments, which were providing new insights into the laws of physics and pointing to possible practical uses of BECs. (See Mathematics and Physical Sciences: Physics. ) As the Swedish Academy observed, “Revolutionary applications of BEC in lithography, nanotechnology, and holography appear to be just round the corner.” Michael Woods Prize for Physiology or Medicine Three researchers shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering discoveries about one of life’s most basic processes. Working independently, Leland H. Hartwell of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Wash., and Paul M. Nurse and R. Timothy Hunt of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), London, illuminated the common mechanisms that regulate the cycle of growth and division in cells ranging from yeast to human beings.

As was acknowledged by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which awarded the $943,000 medicine prize, these findings greatly expanded scientific understanding of cancer and other diseases that occur when the machinery of the cell cycle goes awry. Hartwell was born on Oct. 30, 1939, in Los Angeles. After earning a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1964), he served on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine, from 1965 until 1968, when he moved to the University of Washington. In 1997 he assumed the duties of president and director of the Hutchinson Center. Nurse was born on Jan. 25, 1949, in Great Britain. He received a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, Eng. (1973), later headed the ICRF Cell Cycle Laboratory (1984–87), and served on the faculty of the University of Oxford (1987–93). In 1996 he became director general of the ICRF and, once again, head of its Cell Cycle Laboratory.

Hunt, born on Feb. 19, 1943, in Great Britain, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1968) and later served on its faculty (1981–90). In 1990 he joined the ICRF, rising to principal scientist. The cell cycle comprises a carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolds countless times each day in the human body. An adult human has about 100 trillion cells, all of which originate from the division of a single fertilized egg cell. Even after a human is fully grown, cells continue to divide to replace those that die. In the first phase of the cell cycle, the cell enlarges. On reaching a certain size, it enters the second phase, in which DNA synthesis occurs—the cell duplicates its genetic material and creates a copy of each chromosome. In the next phase, the cell checks to ensure that DNA replication is accurate and prepares for cell division. In the fourth phase, the chromosomes separate into two sets, and the cell divides into two daughter cells, each with one set of chromosomes. The daughter cells then return to the first phase of the cell cycle. The phases of the cycle must be coordinated with great precision.

Each must occur in its proper order and be completed before the next phase begins. Errors in this orchestration may lead to chromosomal abnormalities—for example, chromosomes that have missing or rearranged parts or that are distributed unevenly between the daughter cells. Such abnormalities often occur in cancer cells, which have escaped the normal controls on the cell cycle and multiply in unrestrained fashion. The three Nobel laureates discovered key molecular regulators of the cell cycle, including proteins called cyclins and enzymes called cyclin-dependent kinases. Hartwell started work in the late 1960s, using baker’s yeast as a model organism to study the cell cycle with genetic methods. He identified more than 100 genes, termed cell-division-cycle (CDC) genes, involved in cell-cycle control. For instance, one—named cdc28—controls the first phase and so became known as “start.” Hartwell also found that the cycle includes optional pauses, called checkpoints, that allow time for repair of damaged DNA. Nurse used another type of yeast as his model organism. In the mid-1970s he discovered a gene called cdc2, which works as a master switch to regulate the timing of different cell-cycle events.

In 1987 Nurse isolated the corresponding gene in humans, which was named cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (cdk1). The gene codes for a protein that belongs to a family of key enzymes, the cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), that participate in many cell functions. About a half dozen other CDKs were identified in humans. Hunt isolated the first cyclin in the early 1980s from sea urchins. Cyclins are proteins formed and broken down during each cell cycle. Hunt discovered that cyclin binds to the CDK molecules discovered by Nurse, functioning as a biochemical enabling agent to activate the CDKs. Hunt also showed that the periodic degradation of cyclin is an important general regulatory mechanism in the cell cycle. By 2001 about 10 cyclins had been identified. More about Nobel Prizes: Year In Review 2001 6 References found in Britannica Articles Assorted References The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 V. S.

Naipaul The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul Prize share: 1/1 The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 was awarded to V. S. Naipaul "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories". Photos: Copyright © The Nobel Foundation Share this: To cite this page MLA style: "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 19 Jan 2017. < A life in writing: VS Naipaul The boy from Trinidad who went on to win the Nobel, VS Naipaul has always forged his own path. He admits to no literary influence and has little time for modern fiction<p>The Wiltshire village in which VS Naipaul has lived for more than 30 years is marked as a series of dots only on the most detailed maps.

There are no signs to direct the visitor on adjoining roads, just as there is no indication at the head of the steep and rocky track that tumbles down to Naipaul's redbrick cottage that anything lurks at the bottom except hedgerows and potholes. "I have always seen myself as an outsider in the country," Naipaul says, "and it's caused me no pain at all." On his first visit to India in the early 1960s, he discovered he had become so accustomed to his "strangeness" in England, "that when I entered a shop in India, I expected some recognition of it. And when I wasn't finding that recognition, I felt oddly deflated.

I felt I'd got to make it on my own, as it were." He is quick to draw a distinction between a writer such as himself, "who came here in search of quiet, in order to write", and figures like Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, "who retired, in order to become The Writer in the Country".</p><p>Naipaul's own attempts to shape a way of belonging are delineated in The Enigma of Arrival (1987), an ambitious work that is subtitled "A novel in five sections", though it is more autobiography than fiction. The redbrick cottage is described, the treacherous path (it hasn't improved), and the local people, welcoming yet unavoidably conscious of his double-difference. More than once, in conversation, Naipaul refers to himself as "a floating man". Even on Trinidad, being of Indian descent, "one was always slightly floating in the world".</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books 'Inimitable and truly great' A Nobel for Naipaul.

<a href="">Have your say</a><p>'I am the kind of writer,' VS Naipaul once said, 'that people think other people are reading.' That typically oblique formulation from the latest recruit to the Nobel literary academy is vintage Naipaul, ironically self-deprecating (my audience is small, but select) while at the same time stunningly self-confident, even arrogant (I am a great writer whose work deserves to be widely discussed and admired).</p><p>It is a fair bet that in the next few weeks, as the non-literary world takes the measure of the new Nobel laureate, Sir Vidia, as he does not like to be known, will hardly bother to disguise the provocative disdain that now characterises his public pronouncements.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books Previous Nobel Prize for Literature winners Who won (and who refused) since 1945<p> 2000: Gao Xingjian, China <br> 1999: Gunter Grass, German <br> 1998: Jose Saramago, Portuguese <br> 1997: Dario Fo, Italian<br> 1996:

 Wislawa Szymborska, Polish<br> 1995: Seamus Heaney, Irish<br> 1994: Kenzaburo Oe, Japanese<br> 1993: Toni Morrison, American<br> 1992: Derek Walcott, St.

Lucian<br> 1991: Nadine Gordimer, South African<br> 1990: Octavio Paz, Mexican<br> 1989: Camilo Jose Cela, Spanish<br> 1988: Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian<br> 1987: Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born American<br> 1986: Wole Soyinka, Nigerian<br> 1985: Claude Simon, French<br> 1984: Jaroslav Seifert, Czech<br> 1983: William Golding, British<br> 1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian<br> 1981: Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born Briton<br> 1980: Czeslaw Milosz, Polish-born American<br> 1979: Odysseus Elytis, Greek<br> 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-born American<br> 1977: Vicente Aleixandre, Spanish<br> 1976: Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American<br> 1975: Eugen

io Montale, Italian<br> 1974: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, both Swedish<br> 1973: Patrick White, Australian<br> 1972: Heinrich Boll, German<br> 1971: Pablo Neruda, Chilean<br> 1970: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian<br> 1969: Samuel Beckett, Irish<br> 1968: Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese<br> 1967: Miguel A.

Asturias, Guatemalan<br> 1966: Shmuel Y.

Agnon, Polish-born Israeli, and Nelly Sachs, German-born Swede<br> 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov, Russian<br> 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre, French (declined award)<br> 1963: Giorgos Seferis, Greek<br> 1962: John Steinbeck, American<br> 1961: Ivo Andric, Yugoslav<br> 1960: Saint-John Perse, French<br> 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian<br> 1958: Boris Pasternak, Russian (forced to decline)<br> 1957: Albert Camus, French<br> 1956: Juan Ramon Jimenez, Spanish<br> 1955: Halldor Laxness, Icelandic<br> 1954: Ernest Hemingway, American<br> 1953: Winston Churchill, British<br> 1952: Francois Mauriac, French<br> 1951: Par Lagerkvist, Swedish<br> 1950: Bertrand Russell

, British<br> 1949: William Faulkner, American (awarded in 1950)<br> 1948: TS Eliot, U.S.-born British<br> 1947: Andre Gide, French<br> 1946: Hermann Hesse, Swiss<br> 1945: Gabriela Mistral, Chilean<br></p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books The Nobel Prize – Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature (Full List) | Genius The Nobel Prize in Literature 2006 Orhan Pamuk "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures" The Nobel Prize in Literature 2005 "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms" The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004 Elfriede Jelinek "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power" The Nobel Prize in Literature 2003 John M.

Coetzee "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider" The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002 Imre Kertész "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history" The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1999 Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1998 José Saramago "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1997 Dario Fo "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996 Wislawa Szymborska "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality" The Nobel Prize in Literature

 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1994 Kenzaburo Oe "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991 Nadine Gordimer "who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1990 Octavio Paz "for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1989 Camilo José Cela "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1988 Naguib Mahfouz "who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1987 Joseph Brodsky "for an all-embracing authorship, imb

ued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986 Wole Soyinka "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1985 Claude Simon "who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1984 Jaroslav Seifert "for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man" "for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer "for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1977 Vicente Aleixandre "for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of

 Spanish poetry between the wars" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1976 Saul Bellow "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1975 Eugenio Montale "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1974 Eyvind Johnson "for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom" Harry Martinson "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1973 Patrick White The Nobel Prize in Literature 1968 Yasunari Kawabata "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1967 Miguel Angel Asturias "for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people" Nelly Sachs "for her

 outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1965 Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 John Steinbeck "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1961 Ivo Andric "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1960 Saint-John Perse "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1959 Salvatore Quasimodo "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1958 Boris Leonidovich Pasternak "for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic

 tradition" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1946 Hermann Hesse "for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1945 Gabriela Mistral "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen "for the rare strength and fertility of his poetic imagination with which is combined an intellectual curiosity of wide scope and a bold, freshly creative style" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1943 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year.

The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1942 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1941 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1940 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was with 1/3 allocated to the Main Fund and with 2/3 to the Special Fund of this prize section.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1939 The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1932 John Galsworthy "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt "The poetry of Erik Axel Karlfeldt" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1930 Sinclair Lewis "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1929 Thomas Mann "principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1927 Henri Bergson "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1926 Grazia Deledda "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth

 and sympathy deal with human problems in general" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925 George Bernard Shaw "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1924 Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont "for his great national epic, The Peasants" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923 William Butler Yeats "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1922 Jacinto Benavente "for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1921 Anatole France "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1920 Knut Pedersen Hamsun "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1919 Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler "in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring" The Nobel

 Prize in Literature 1918 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year.

The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1915 Romain Rolland "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1914 No Nobel Prize was awarded this year. The prize money was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 Rabindranath Tagore "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1912 Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann "primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1911 Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1910 Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse "as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories" The Nobel Prize in Literature 19

09 "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken "in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength in presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1906 Giosuè Carducci "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1904 Frédéric Mistral "in recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural scenery and native spirit of his people, and, in addition, his significant work as a Provençal philologist" José Echegaray y Eizaguirre "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original

 manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1903 Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1902 Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen "the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, A history of Rome" The Nobel Prize in Literature 1901 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" More on Genius About “Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature (Full List)” The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” 109 writers have been awarded the prize since 1901.

Here’s the full list with annotations. Hidden Nobel in Literature Goes to Naipaul, an Explorer of Exile - The New York Times The New York Times Books |Nobel in Literature Goes to Naipaul, an Explorer of Exile Search Continue reading the main story LONDON, Oct. 11 — V. S. Naipaul, the eloquent Trinidad-born English writer who uses fiction, nonfiction and sometimes a fusion of the two to explore themes of exile, dislocation, and the agonizing dilemmas of postcolonial societies, was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature today by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. In its citation for the award, worth $943,000 this year, the academy praised Mr. Naipaul, the author of more than 25 books, for "having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." Mr. Naipaul, 69, likes to be left in peace, and was reluctant to take today's telephone call that turned out to be from the Swedish Academy president informing him that he had won the prize, he said in an interview.

It was not until his wife, Nadia, told him that "a desperate Swedish man wants to speak to you" that Mr. Naipaul agreed to get up from his desk and come to the phone. Speaking by telephone from his house in Salisbury, Wiltshire, Mr. Naipaul said the news had caught him unawares. "I had a gloomy night, and when I got up this morning, I was trying to get energized," he said. "All I wanted was a piece of luck in my life." He asked the Swedish caller whether the call was a hoax, and was told it was not. Continue reading the main story "I said it was unexpected, completely unexpected," Mr. Naipaul said. "I don't stand for any country. He acknowledged that and said they were honored that I would get the award in the 100th year of the Nobel prizes. That moved me. It is a very gracious gift." Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr.

Naipaul's works are set in many places and explore many themes, but he is best known for his knowing depictions of Trinidad, where he was born and reared; for his explorations of modern-day India, his ancestral land; and for his bleak, unsparing portraits of postcolonial countries in Africa, Asia and South America. His fiction is often highly autobiographical, returning again and again to the themes of alienation, the burdens of the past, and the confusions of the present. On several occasions he has announced that the novel is dead, but last month he published in Britain a new novel, "Half a Life," his first in seven years. (It is to be published later this month in the United States.) Many critics have lavished praise on Mr. Naipaul's elegant prose style and his ability to address big issues through the accretion of telling detail. "Though he is a marvelous technician, there is something finally modest, personal, openly committed about his fiction, a frankness of personal reference that removes him from the godlike impersonality of the novelist," Alfred Kazin wrote in a review of "In a Free State" (1971) in The New York Review of Books.

Known for his surliness toward journalists and his penchant for sweeping, bad-tempered statements about topics from the welfare state (he is against it) to the works of contemporary novelists (he is against them, too), Mr. Naipaul found himself the subject of a bitter attack by the writer Paul Theroux, once one of his closest friends, in 1998. In "Sir Vidia's Shadow," a book about the breakdown of their friendship, Mr. Theroux portrayed Mr. Naipaul as cheap, vain, misogynistic and misanthropic. Mr. Naipaul's detractors accuse him most frequently of being an unreconstructed pessimist who writes with contempt and scorn about the third world and its problems. The poet Derek Walcott, another West Indian and Nobel laureate, has criticized him for what Mr. Walcott calls his "abhorrence of Negroes." Not everyone agrees. " `Half a Life' confirms Naipaul's stature as the greatest living analyst of the colonial and postcolonial dilemma," the critic James Wood wrote recently in The New Statesman.

"Those who have never approved of that analysis, and have objected over the years to what they see as Naipaul's fatalism, snobbery or even racism, may find in this book the surprise of a submerged radicalism, a willingness to see things from the eyes of the disadvantaged." In several books, most recently "Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples," Mr. Naipaul has written unflatteringly about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, basing his views on travels in non-Arabic places like Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. In a recent reading in London, he condemned Islam's "calamitous effect" and compared it to Western colonialism. Some critics have said that his view of Islam is simplistic and wrong. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy The Swedish Academy has often given Nobels to writers with decidedly political agendas — it gave the 2000 prize to Gao Xingjian, a Chinese dissident and exile — but Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the academy, said that Mr.

Naipaul's conclusions in "Beyond Belief" were more subtle than perhaps he had been given credit for. "What he's really attacking in Islam is a particular trait that it has in common with all cultures that conquerors bring along, that it tends to obliterate the preceding cultures," he told The Press Association. "To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say, `My ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.' " Advertisement Continue reading the main story Doubly displaced, Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul has spent a lifetime pondering his place in the world, trying to square his own ancestral culture with that of his birthplace and that of England, the country he adopted as his home. He was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, in 1932, the grandson of a Hindu in the Brahmin caste from the north of India who had moved to Trinidad to work on the sugar plantations. His father, Seepersad, desperately wanted to be a fiction writer but had to settle for working at the local newspaper, The Trinidad Guardian. The young Mr.

Naipaul grew up poor but with a burning desire — fully supported by his ambitious father — to succeed in the wider world, and when he was 18 he went to England on a Trinidad government scholarship to University College, Oxford. Mr. Naipaul felt lonely and isolated, and his alienation was not helped by the rejection of several early attempts at fiction. But he had more success with a series of satirical novels set in Trinidad, including "The Mystic Masseur" (1957). He had his first great success with "A House for Mr. Biswas" (1961), a novel which was also set in Trinidad and in which the protagonist was based, very affectionately, on Mr. Naipaul's father. He then turned his attention outward, describing with increasing dismay the effects of colonialism and emerging nationalism in the third world.

Among his other best-known works are "In a Free State" (1971), an acid portrayal of exiles in Africa, which won the Booker Prize that year; "A Bend in the River" (1979), another novel about Africa and the dislocation and chaos brought by postcolonial power struggles; and "The Enigma of Arrival" (1987), an autobiographical novel set around a decaying native English estate and its ailing landlord. Mr. Naipaul has also been acclaimed for "A Way in the World" (1994), a sprawling work that attempts to fuse many of his favorite themes, freely mixing fiction and nonfiction, novel and memoir, history and imagination. "At its heart, this novel is a probing meditation on the relationships among personal, national and world histories," wrote Brent Staples in a review of the book in The New York Times. In 1990 Mr. Naipaul, the ultimate outsider, received the ultimate insider's accolade: a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, although he doesn't officially use his title.

His first wife, Patricia Hale, died in 1996; soon afterward he married Nadia Khannum Alvi, a Pakistani journalist. He has lived in Salisbury, near Stonehenge, since the 1970's, but has never admitted to belonging anywhere. He prefers to describe himself as "the world's writer," unattached to any one tradition. "It came to me that the great novelists wrote about highly organized societies," he wrote once in an essay. "I had no such society; I couldn't share the assumptions of the writers; I didn't see my world reflected in theirs." In its citation, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Naipaul for using that quality to his advantage: "V. S. Naipaul is a literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice." USATODAY.com - Trinidad-born British writer wins Nobel in literature Nobel Prizes Web site. Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad but is British by choice, has fashioned his novels and journalism from the cultural chaos of the postcolonial world.

The Swedish Academy singled out Naipaul's masterpiece The Enigma of Arrival, (1987) saying that in it the author created an "unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the demise of European neighborhoods." The 69-year-old novelist and short story writer, who left Trinidad at the age of 18, presents impressions of the country of his ancestors, India, and critical assessments of Muslim fundamentalism in non-Arab countries like Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan in two well-known works, according to the citation. He was also cited for "having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." Naipaul has the reputation of being a tough-minded, misanthropic man. He does not engage in such literary rituals as publishing parties and scribbling blurbs for the works of peers. In Sir Vidia's Shadow, a highly unflattering book published in 1998, former friend Paul Theroux wrote that "he elevated crankishness as the proof of his artistic temperament." Author of more than 20 books, including such celebrated novels as A House for Mr.

Biswas and A Bend in the River, Naipaul has had an exhausting literary career. The prize, first awarded to French author Sully Prudhomme in 1901, is worth $943,000 in this centennial year. Last year's winner was little-known exiled Chinese novelist and playwright Gao Xingjian, a French citizen. His award was denounced by the Chinese government as political. Italy's Dario Fo and Germany's Guenter Grass are other recent winners with strong political views. Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the 215-year-old Swedish Academy that selects the winners, has acknowledged the prizes sometimes have political implications but insists the choice is always based on literary merits. The 18 lifetime members of the academy make the selection in deep secrecy at one of their weekly Thursday meetings and nominees are not publicly revealed for 50 years, leaving the literary world with only speculation about who might be in the running.

Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, offered only vague guidance about the prizes in his will, saying only the award should go to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." The awards always are handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. The Nobels started Monday with the naming of medicine prize winners, American Leland H. Hartwell and Britons Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse, for work on cell development that could lead to new cancer treatments. The physics award went Tuesday to German scientist Wolfgang Ketterle and Americans Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman for creating a new state of matter, an ultra-cold gas known as Bose-Einstein condensate. On Wednesday, the economics prize went to Americans George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz for developing ways to measure the power of information in a wide range of deals and investments. On the same day, Americans K. Barry Sharpless and William S.

Knowles shared the chemistry prize with Ryoji Noyori of Japan for showing how to better control chemical reactions used in producing medicines. The peace prize is to be announced on Friday in Oslo, Norway. Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Question: Who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature?
Answer: V.S. NAIPAUL