Every December since 1901 in Stockholm the Swedish Academy awards the Nobel Prize in Literature. During the past 100 plus years, there have been six winners of Italian descent. They are Giosuè Carducci, Grazia Deledda, Luigi Pirandello, Salvatore Quasimodo, Eugenio Montale and Dario Fo.

Giosuè Carducci, who passed away in 1907 at the age of 72, just one year after being awarded the Nobel Prize, was one of Italy's greatest poets and teachers. Carducci was chosen to win the Nobel Prize "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces."

Recognized as the unofficial national poet of modern Italy, he showcased in his most famous poem, Inno a Satana (Hymn to Satan) his disdain and revolutionary fervor directed against the papacy. While that had great impact, his finest poetry came in his New Rhymes and Odi Barbare collections. He was the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Born in 1835 in a small town in northwestern Tuscany, Carducci's father was a doctor and an advocate of the unification of Italy, causing the family to move several times during his childhood. Eventually the Carducci family settled in Florence.

After receiving his Ph.D. from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 1856, Carducci began his teaching career and published his first collection of poems, Rime, a year later. This proved to be a difficult time for the published poet as his father died and his brother committed suicide around that time. Carducci married Elvira Menicucci in 1859 and they had four children.

Grazia Deledda has been the only female to win the award. She won the Nobel Prize in 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."

A native of Sardinia, Deledda's works were based on facts of love, pain and death. In her novels there is always a strong connection between places, people, feelings and environment. Born in 1871 into a bourgeois family, Deledda was educated by a private tutor after attending elementary school and then studied literature on her own. Although some of her works were published in the magazine L'ultima moda, Deledda's first published work was Nell'azzurro, which was published in 1890 by Trevisani.

Luigi Pirandello was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934 "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art."

Born in the Sicilian village of Caos near Agrigento, Pirandello came from a wealthy family. His father's, Stefano, family was involved in the sulfur industry and his mother, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, also descended from a wealthy bourgeois family. Both families actively participated in the struggle for unification and "Il Risorgimento" (democracy). Pirandello would eventually assimilate a sense of betrayal in his poems because of his disappointment in the reality created by this new unification.

In 1894 he published his first collection of short stories, Amori senza amore (Loves Without Love). In 1900 he published some of his most celebrated novellas, including Lume di Sicilia, La paura del sonno and then his collection of poems, Zampogna. Pirandello's last, and perhaps greatest, novel Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One and One Hundred Thousand) was published in episode form in Fira Letteraria.

Pirandello was nominated the Academic of Italy in 1929. He died just seven years later in his home in Rome.

Salvatore Quasimodo was born of Sicilian parents in Modica, near Syracuse. Initially, Quasimodo wanted to become an engineer, attending technical schools in Palermo and then the Politecnico in Rome. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, economic strain prevented him from completing his studies in the field.

In 1930 Quasimodo had three poems published in Solaria. That same year he published his first book of verse, Acque e terre (Waters and Lands). During the Second World War Quasimodo experienced the need of the poet to feel one with the people and to declare himself as such in his poems. The role of a poet to him was to be an active one in which he needed to commit his talent to the struggles of the day.

Quasimodo won the Nobel Prize in 1959 at the age of 58 "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times." He died in Naples on June 14, 1968.

Eugenio Montale received the Nobel Prize in 1975 "for his distinctive poetry, which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions." He died six years later in Milan.

Montale was an Italian poet born in Genoa. The youngest of six sons born into a family that traded chemical products, he was a self-taught man whose imagination was forged by several writers, including Dante Alighieri. Montale wrote of his private feelings, observations of things surrounding him and his vision of the world. He wrote a relatively small number of works including poems of total illogic, War to End All Wars. His native Liguria was a strong presence in his early poems.

Dario Fo, born in Leggiuno-Sangiano near the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden." His work employed comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell arte.

There's an old Italian proverb that says, "La lingua non ha ossa, ma rompe il dorso," which means, "The tongue has no bones, but it can break a man's back." The same can be said for the written word. Dario Fo, in collaboration with his wife, Franca Rame, used laughter in his literary and theater talent to knock the conservative establishment of Italy's political scene. Simply stated, Fo and his wife took on the abuses, hypocrisies and injustices of society and staged them on the conventional dramatic circuit in Milan. To draw greater attention among the working and the poor they went on to establish theaters in those neighborhoods and created satirical plays and comedies that not only entertained, but also exposed corruption in the Italian government. Most famous were Morte accidentale di un anarchio (Accidental Death of an Anarchist) and Non si paga, non si paga! (We won't pay!)

In Non si paga, which became an off-Broadway hit in the 1980s, the play begins with a strike over high supermarket prices by a group of angry housewives and spills over to commuters and factory workers until the city of Milan is shut down. In creating this play Fo used physical comedy to bring home the serious issue of the rising cost of living and citizens refusing to pay taxes to a corrupt government. In Morte Accidentale di un Anarchio, Fo lampoons the police in the way they handled the homicide of a political activist.

Together during a 30-year-plus dramatic career wrapped around more than 70 plays, Fo and Rame created controversial works, many of which were translated into many languages and performed throughout the world. The universal themes of social injustices spoke to people everywhere.

In 2006, Fo ran for mayor of Milan, finishing second in the primary election held by the center-left L'Unione. He obtained over 20% of votes and was supported by the Communist Refoundation Party. Rame was elected as senator for the Italy of Values party in the Italian general election held in April of last year.