Hungarian writer Imre Kertész took the Nobel in 2002 for "writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history," according to the committee statement. A survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, Mr. Kertész published his first novel in 1975, "Sorstalanság" (published as "Fateless" in 1992), about Hungarian Jews sent to the Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
According to the committee, "Kertész's message is that to live is to conform. The capacity of the captives to come to terms with Auschwitz is one outcome of the same principle that finds expression in everyday human coexistence."
