Dylan

The Swedish Academy on Thursday in Stockholm awarded U.S. folk icon, Bob Dylan, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

This year, the prize is worth 930,000 dollars.

Sara Danius, the Academy Permanent Secretary who announced the prize, said the 75 years old Dylan, won the award for creating “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.

“He samples the great tradition all the way from American folk song to delta blues to the Appalachian to French modernism in a very original way.

“He had repeatedly reinvented himself and his craft.’’

Danius said the poet originally became famous as a protest singer in the 1960s, with songs such as “Masters of War” and “The Times they are A-Changin.

Dylan also penned the rock classic “Like a Rolling Stone.

The secretary said that Dylan hosted a critically-acclaimed radio show and written the well-received memoir “Chronicles.”

The Academy in 2015 selected Belarusian author and investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich for the literature prize.

Thursday’s announcement completed the annual Nobel Prize announcements.

Awards have earlier been awarded in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, peace and economics.

This year, the prizes are each worth 8 million kronor (930,000 dollars).

The awards were presented every year on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalled that the Nobel Prize in Literature was first awarded in 1901 and since then, the Swedish Academy has handed out 109 prizes to 113 writers.

NAN noted that the awards were not given out in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943.

The youngest literature laureate was Rudyard Kipling, who was 42 when he won in 1907, while the oldest literature laureate was Doris Lessing, who was 88 when she won in 2007.

The average age of all literature laureates between 1901 and 2015 is 65.

Available data showed that two people have declined the award, Boris Pasternak in 1958, first accepted but then declined the prize because of pressure, including threatened deportation, from his country, the Soviet Union.

Jean Paul-Sartre also in 1964 consistently declined all official honours.

It is on record that fourteen women have won the literature prize, and the Swedish author Selma Lagerloef was the first woman to win, in 1909.

The laureates wrote in languages ranging from English, French and German others are Japanese, Arabic and Chinese.

The prize was awarded posthumously once in 1931 to Erik Axel Karlfeldt. From 1974, the Nobel Foundation decided that a prize could not be awarded posthumously unless death has occurred after the announcement of the Nobel. (dpa/NAN)