The Nobel Prize in Literature was not awarded seven times between 1901 and 2023.
The missing years were 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943. Four of those years fell during the Second World War, while 1914 and 1918 were affected by the First World War. The remaining gap, 1935, occurred between the two world wars.
A year without a Literature laureate does not mean the Nobel Prize was permanently cancelled. The Nobel Foundation’s statutes allow the prize money to be reserved when no work under consideration is judged important enough, with the possibility of awarding it later. War also made normal selection and ceremonies difficult or impossible.
The number seven is specific to Literature, not to the Nobel Prizes as a whole. Other categories have their own lists of years without awards, and the total across all Nobel categories is much larger. Another common mistake is to count years in which a prize was announced late or shared; those still count as awarded years. The seven-year total remains correct through 2023.