Question

Who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2011?

• A. Paul Lauterbur
• B. Bill Clinton
• C. Tomas Transtromer
• D. Shirin Ebadi

Hint:

The winner was a Swedish poet who also worked as a psychologist, the first Swede to take the prize since 1974.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Nobel questions are easiest to crack by tagging each name with its own field and year, then keeping only the one that lands on Literature in 2011.

1. Paul Lauterbur: An American chemist who shared the 2003 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine with Peter Mansfield for the discoveries that made MRI scanning possible. A science prize, and eight years too early.
2. Bill Clinton: The 42nd President of the United States. He holds no Nobel Prize at all, so he is out immediately. His name is here because it is familiar.
3. Tomas Transtromer: A Swedish poet, born 1931, who also worked as a psychologist with young offenders. The Swedish Academy gave him the 2011 Literature prize for condensed, translucent images that give fresh access to reality. He is the answer.
4. Shirin Ebadi: An Iranian lawyer, the country's first woman judge, who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on democracy and the rights of women and children. Right prize family, wrong category and wrong year.

Only Transtromer matches both filters. A few extra facts help fix him in memory: his best known books are 17 Poems, Baltic and The Sorrow Gondola, a stroke in 1990 took away much of his speech but not his writing, and he was the first Swedish winner of the literature prize since 1974.

Let us summarize:

• Nobel Literature 2011: Tomas Transtromer of Sweden, poet and psychologist.
• Lauterbur is Medicine 2003 and Ebadi is Peace 2003, so both fail the year and the category.
• Bill Clinton has never received a Nobel Prize.

The correct answer is option (C), Tomas Transtromer.