The Swedish Academy, comprising 18 lifetime members, each year awards the Nobel Prize to the world’s greatest writer for a lifetime of writing achievement. Unlike the American Pulitzer Prize, which awards a single work published in a single year, the Nobel is awarded not for any single piece of literature, but for one’s total literary accomplishment. As with many awards, political considerations may determine why some writers receive the award and others do not. In recent years, the Nobel Committee has emphasized awards to the best classical writers of nations not previously recognized. The course will first emphasize insights into the culture of Nobel literary laureates; more so, it will demonstrate the universality of their concepts and the persuasion of their writing.A second emphasis will be the effect of life upon writers whose nations have emerged into the postcolonial period. The stories of Pearl Buck offer opportunities to study the Chinese takeover of Tibet and English control of Hong Kong. The study of Camus will hope to comprehend the nature of Algerian life under French rule. The works of William Butler Yeats and his part in the Irish revolution will enable the class to study the history of Ireland under English rule, a history being enacted from the past to the present in the ongoing fight to wrest Ulster from the British. English colonial rule may also be studied in the drama of the Nigerian Nobel Prize Winner Wolè Soyinka, though one generally concentrates on Nigerian religious belief.