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 sides of the Nobel Prize medals for Chemistry and Physics share the same design. The medal for the Nobel Prize in Literature was designed by Erik Lindberg. Nobel laureates receive a Diploma directly from the King of Sweden. Each Diploma is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureate that receives it. The Diploma contains a picture and text that states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. Potential recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature are difficult to predict as nominations are kept secret for fifty years until they are