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 in Literature Mark Twain were rejected in favor of authors little read today. During World War I and its immediate aftermath, the committee adopted a policy of neutrality, favouring writers from non-combatant countries. August Strindberg was repeatedly bypassed by the committee, but holds the singular distinction of being awarded an Anti-Nobel Prize, conferred by popular acclaim and national subscription and presented to him in 1912 by future prime minister Hjalmar Branting. James Joyce wrote the books that rank 1st and 3rd on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels – "Ulysses" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" – but Joyce