The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, and began his musical career in 1959, playing in coffee houses in Minnesota.
Much of Bob Dylan’s best-known work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal historian of America’s troubles.
Songs like Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They are A-Changin’ became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements.
Bob Dylan’s move away from traditional folk songwriting, paired with a controversial decision to “go electric” proved equally influential.
His many albums include Highway 61 Revisited in 1965, Blonde on Blonde in 1966 and Blood on the Tracks in 1975.
Since the late 1980s Bob Dylan has toured persistently, an undertaking he has dubbed the Never-Ending Tour.
Bob Dylan had long been tipped as a potential Nobel recipient, but few experts expected the academy to extend the prestigious award to a genre such as folk rock music.
The award will be presented alongside this year’s other five Nobel Prizes on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s 1896 death.
