American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize in Literature may have come as a surprise to some but he is not the first poet to be awarded by the Swedish Academy. There have been 33 poets, including Indian literary giant Rabindranath Tagore, who have been accorded the honour, although a majority of the winners were chosen for their prose.
Tagore's Nobel citation says he was chosen for the Nobel (in 1913) "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the
West."
The last American who won the prize was novelist Toni Morrison in 1993, who is one of the 14 women (out of 113 winners) to win the Nobel literature prize since its inception in 1901. The past year's winner was also a woman, journalist Svetlana
Alexievich, who was honoured for her non-fiction books that "criticize political regimes in both the Soviet Union and later Belarus."
Bob Dylan is also a painter, actor, and scriptwriter whose work in the 1960s is still influential. Born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, Dylan began playing in bands as a teenager and was influenced by the singer Woody Guthrie. "Dylan has recorded a large number of albums revolving around topics like the social conditions of man, religion, politics and love," the academy said in a note (Link to 'note':
https://www.nobelprize.org/
"Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan has toured persistently, an undertaking called the 'Never-Ending Tour'. Dylan has the status of an icon," the academy added.
Dylan's interest in musical genres included country, folk, rhythm and blues. In addition to his popular albums, he was written an autobiography 'Chronicles' (2004), which describes his youth and popular culture when he lived in New York.