Jerusalem Prize

The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial literary award

Literary award

A literary award is an award presented to an author who has written a particularly lauded piece or body of work. There are awards for forms of writing ranging from poetry to novels. Many awards are also dedicated to a certain genre of fiction or non-fiction writing . There are also awards...

 given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society. It is awarded at the Jerusalem International Book Fair, and the recipient usually delivers an address when accepting the award. The award is valued at $10,000, a modest amount that "reflects that it was never intended to be anything more than a symbolic sum." The prize's inaugural year was 1963, awarded to Bertrand Russell who had won the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 in 1950. Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

, V.S. Naipaul, J.M Coetzee and Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...

 all won the Jerusalem Prize prior to winning the Nobel.

List of Laureates

Year	Name	Nationality	Language(s)
1963	Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...		English
1965	Max Frisch Max Frisch Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...		German
1967	André Schwarz-Bart Andre Schwarz-Bart André Schwarz-Bart was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins....		French
1969	Ignazio Silone Ignazio Silone Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian author and politician.-Early life and career:...		Italian
1971	Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...		Spanish
1973	Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...	/	French
1975	Simone de Beauvoir Simone de Beauvoir Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...		French
1977	Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...		Spanish
1979	Isaiah Berlin Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...	Russian Empire /	English
1981	Graham Greene Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...		English
1983	V. S. Naipaul V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...	/	English
1985	Milan Kundera Milan Kundera Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...	Czechoslovakia /	Czech / French
1987	J. M. Coetzee	South Africa	English
1989	Ernesto Sabato Ernesto Sabato Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...		Spanish
1991	Zbigniew Herbert Zbigniew Herbert Zbigniew Herbert was an influential Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement – Home Army during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers...		Polish
1993	Stefan Heym Stefan Heym Helmut Flieg was a German-Jewish writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym. He lived in the United States between 1935 and 1952, before moving back to the part of his native Germany which was, from 1949–1990, German Democratic Republic...		German / English
1995	Mario Vargas Llosa Mario Vargas Llosa Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...		Spanish
1997	Jorge Semprún Jorge Semprún Jorge Semprún Maura was a Spanish writer and politician who lived in France most of his life and wrote primarily in French. From 1953 to 1962, during the era of Francisco Franco, Semprún lived clandestinely in Spain working as an organizer for the exiled Communist Party of Spain, but was expelled...		French / Spanish
1999	Don DeLillo Don DeLillo Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...		English
2001	Susan Sontag Susan Sontag Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...		English
2003	Arthur Miller Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...		English
2005	António Lobo Antunes António Lobo Antunes António Lobo Antunes, GCSE, MD ; born 1 September 1942) is a Portuguese novelist and medical doctor.-Life and career:António Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon as the eldest of six sons of João Alfredo de Figueiredo Lobo Antunes , prominent Neurologist and Professor, close collaborator of Egas Moniz,...		Portuguese
2007	Leszek Kołakowski		Polish
2009	Haruki Murakami Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...		Japanese
2011	Ian McEwan Ian McEwan Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....		English

External links

• Jerusalem Prize at the Jerusalem Book Fair