Nobel Prize controversies been favored to receive the Prize, but a committee member was later quoted as saying that they would have been "too predictable, too popular." The 1974 prize was denied to Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and Saul Bellow in favor of a joint award for Swedish authors Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson—both Nobel judges and unknown outside their home country. Bellow won in 1976; neither Greene nor Nabokov took home the prize. The 1970 prize was awarded to Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who did not attend the ceremony in Stockholm for fear that the Soviet Union would prevent his return. His
Nobel Prize controversies Nobel Prize controversies After his death in 1896, the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel established the Nobel Prizes. Nobel's will specified that annual prizes are to be awarded for service to humanity in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Similarly, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is awarded along with the Nobel Prizes. Since the first award in 1901, the prizes have occasionally engendered criticism and controversy. Nobel sought to reward "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind". One prize, he