Until 2018, the Swedish Academy's 18 members technically held the position for life. That changed when three group members stepped down in protest against the Academy membership of poet Katarina Frostenson, whose husband is accused of sexual harassment. Academy secretary Sara Danius (photo) and Frostenson also left shortly afterwards, leading to the decision to postpone the 2018 award.

While the famous author of "The Satanic Verses" never won the Nobel Prize in Literature, some members of the Swedish Academy felt their organization should denounce Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's assassination in 1989. The Academy refused to do so, and three members resigned in protest.

He became the first singer-songwriter to obtain the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, shocking quite a few literature purists. Then Dylan didn't even seem that interested by the recognition. He didn't show up at the awards ceremony and simply sent a brief thank-you speech instead of the traditional Nobel lecture. He finally collected his prize in Stockholm in March 2017.

Thomas Mann received the prize in 1929, but it wasn't for his most recent work, "The Magic Mountain" (1924), which the jury found too tedious. The distinction instead recognized his debut novel, "Buddenbrooks" — published 28 years earlier. Time had apparently added to its value. The jury said, it "has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature."

When she was honored with the prize in 2004, Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek also refused to go to the awards ceremony. "I cannot manage being in a crowd of people. I cannot stand public attention," the reclusive playwright said. The Swedish Academy had to accept her agoraphobia, but she did, at least, hold her Nobel lecture — per video.

The Soviet author, world famous for his novel "Doctor Zhivago," obtained Nobel recognition in 1958. However, Soviet authorities forced him to decline the prize; he wouldn't be able to re-enter the country if he went to the Stockholm ceremony. Even though he followed his government's orders, he was still demonized afterwards. His son picked up the award in 1989, 29 years after the author's death.

When Italian comedian and playwright Dario Fo won the prize in 1997, the announcement came as a shock to many literary critics, who saw him as just an entertainer and not a real literary figure with an international standing. The satirist fired back with his Nobel speech, which he titled "Against jesters who defame and insult."

Although British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945, he actually obtained the award for his written works — mostly memoirs, history volumes and speeches — in 1953. The jury praised "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."

The French philosopher and playwright was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, but he declined it, saying that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution" by accepting official honors. It was rumored that he later asked for the prize money anyway — but that story was never confirmed.

Winning the award in 1907 at the age of 41, British author Joseph Rudyard Kipling, best known for "The Jungle Book" (1894), remains the youngest Nobel laureate in literature to this day. However, his legacy has since been marred by the fact that Kipling, who spent his early childhood and some of his adult life in India, vehemently spoke out in defense of British colonialism.

On a faraway island, a sailor discovers an ideal society: There is equality among the locals, it is democratic, ownership is communal. It was the opposite of life in England at the time. And: there were no epidemics, unlike England that had suffered from the plague more than once. The above photo shows Dresden Semper Opera dancers as "Utopians" in a musical theater project based on More's novel.

Seven women and three men flee the plague to a country house near Florence. As cruel as the descriptions are at the beginning, the 100 novellas in the collection are surprisingly entertaining. To pass the time, each of the fugitives determines a topic per day and everyone has to tell a corresponding story. Subtle or crude, tragic or comical — a whole world unfolds.

Bacon envisioned a utopian island by the name of Bensalem, home to the people of the lost city of Atlantis. They are very involved in research and science, and inventions including the submarine, wind turbines and hearing aids are anticipated on "New Atlantis." Foreign seafarers were initially quarantined to protect islands from possible diseases.

Daniel Defoe, five years old and whisked away to the countryside to keep him safe during the Great Plague in London, relied on eyewitness accounts and meticulous research for his description of the devastating events. Defoe tells the tale of a city in a state of emergency, faced with hysteria, superstition, unemployment, looting and fraud.

In Camus' "The Plague," a doctor by the name of Bernard Rieux describes how first rats die of the plague, followed by thousands of citizens in the Algerian port city of Oran. Everyone takes a different approach to the fight against the Black Death, but in the end, it kills the innocent and the ruthless alike.

A mutant virus breaks out of a military research laboratory and kills almost the entire US population. Only few are immune, left to assert themselves in a depopulated world with a collapsed infrastructure. Two groups — basically the "good" and the "evil" — emerge, both headed by charismatic leaders.

The inhabitants of a nameless city go blind all of a sudden. To prevent the spread of a potential disease, they are housed in an empty psychiatric ward, and attended to by a doctor and his wife, played by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in the 2008 film of the same name (picture). The situation quickly escalates, but in the greatest chaos, some people regain their eyesight.

The novel is set in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944 during a severe outbreak of polio. It recreates the terror, fear, poor information and feeling of powerlessness among the population faced by a paralytic disease that mainly affected children, crippling one child after the next. A vaccine wasn't available until 1955.

Winston Churchill turned to painting around 1914 but by 1962 he had all but stopped. Churchill's bodyguard Edmund Murray encouraged the aging statesman to take up his paintbrushes one last time. As a subject, Churchill chose his estates goldfish pond, where he spent Sundays with his grandkids. He gifted the work to Murray. "The Goldfish Pond at Chartwell" earned 357,000 GBP at a Sotheby's auction.

British politician Winston Churchill (1874-1965) likely rarely suffered from boredom. When he wasn't painting in his free time, he was writing books about politics or history. In 1953, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Churchill is pictured here in 1956.

"Winston Churchill. Writings. Speeches. Pictures" was the succint title of the exhibition in the Günter Grass House in Lübeck in northern Germany. From late 2016 through early 2017, the museum displayed 11 of Churchill's paintings. The show reveals the lesser known sides of the former British prime minister and amateur painter.

Churchill kept a number of animals on his property in Chartwell, located south of London in the English county of Kent. Among them were black swans, which he particularly admired. They were his inspiration for this oil painting.

Churchill bought his paints from a Swiss paint maker named Willy Sax. The two men became friends and traveled together to southern France. But Churchill's painting of a bridge in Aix-en-Provence wasn't created in France. Instead, the statesman painted it in his studio, based on a photo taken by Sax.

This painting of temple ruins was probably created in 1934. In 1956, Churchill gave it to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — Germany's first leader after World War II. It recalls the destruction in Europe and the spirit of the antiquity, says Jörg-Philipp Thomsa, the director of the Günter Grass House.

Along with 11 paintings, the Lübeck exhibition is also displaying numerous writings and speeches by the former British prime minister. Churchill was the author of over a dozen books. His speeches still evoke emotion and his thoughts about Europe couldn't be more relevant today.