Posted by Steven on 3/10/2011, 22:39:40, in reply to "Re: Nobel Prize for Literature"
76.186.51.185
After I posted my guesses this morning, I ran across this quote someone had extracted from an article in The Guardian:
"So is it finally Philp Roth's turn? The much-touted Syrian poet Adonis sits atop the betting at 4/1, with last year's favourite, the Swedish poet Thomas Tranströmer, following at 11/2. The Hungarian novelist Péter Nádas comes next, with the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami close behind – both seem to have important books out this year in Swedish translation. As I write, Philip Roth languishes at 25/1.
"Anyone who fancies a bet – and who is foolhardy enough to pay any attention to tips from the Guardian books desk – might consider Algerian novelist Assia Djebar: the first woman cited by Ladbrokes. When the permanent secretary of the Academy, Peter Englund, came in to talk about picking the winner, he admitted that he was conscious of the lack of women laureates – though he also insisted that individual winners stood only for themselves. Surely in the year of the Arab spring a woman author writing in Arabic must be in with a strong shout."
So Adonis or Transtromer could be the "poet I've never heard of." I've seen books by Nadas on the bookstore shelves next to Nabakov, but that's all I know about him. I haven't heard of Djebar, but at least my hunch about an Arab Spring tie-in wasn't too far-fetched. Actually El Saadawi could be a candidate for the Peace prize as well as the Literature for her activism on behalf of Arab women.
Further Googling shows that Thomas Pynchon actually has the best odds of any English-language author at 17-1, with Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Banville sharing Roth's odds at 25-1. They might give it to Pynchon just to see if he would come out in public to get it.
Mario Vargas Llosa was a 40-1 pick, so these odds obviously don't mean a whole lot.
With that disclaimer, I copied the following from Ladbrokes web site, the English oddsmakers whose odds are the ones always quoted (can you just see Americans betting on literature
) I've at least heard of most of these, but I've read only about a third of them.
Adonis
4/1
Tomas Transtromer
6/1
Haruki Murakami
8/1
Peter Nadas
10/1
Assia Djebar
12/1
Ko Un
14/1
Les Murray
16/1
Thomas Pynchon
18/1
Philip Roth
20/1
Nuruddin Farah
20/1
Mircea Cartarescu
25/1
Cormac McCarthy
25/1
John Banville
25/1
Joyce Carol Oates
25/1
Amos Oz
25/1
Antonio Lobo Antunes
25/1
Bob Dylan
25/1
K. Satchidanandan
33/1
Colm Toibin
33/1
Don DeLillo
33/1
Claudio Magris
33/1
Adam Zagajewski
33/1
Antonio Tabucchi
33/1
Alice Munro
33/1
A.S. Byatt
33/1
Milan Kundera
33/1
Cees Nooteboom
33/1
Ismail Kadare
33/1
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
33/1
Rajendra Bhandari
40/1
Christa Wolf
40/1
Maya Angelou
40/1
E.L Doctorow
40/1
Margaret Atwood
40/1
Ernesto Cardenal
40/1
Juan Marse
40/1
Bei Dao
40/1
Patrick Modiano
40/1
Vaclav Havel
40/1
Yves Bonnefoy
50/1
Michel Tournier
50/1
Viktor Pelevin
66/1
Ian McEwan
50/1
Salman Rushdie
50/1
Javier Marias
50/1
Carlos Fuentes
50/1
Umberto Eco
50/1
Elias Khoury
50/1
Louise Gluck
50/1
Samih al-Qasim
50/1
Peter Handke
66/1
Gitta Sereny
66/1
William Trevor
50/1
Shlomo Kalo
66/1
Chinua Achebe
66/1
Anne Carson
66/1
A.B Yehoshua
66/1
Juan Goytisolo
66/1
Luis Goytisolo
80/1
David Malouf
80/1
Paul Auster
80/1
Per Petterson
80/1
Jonathan Littell
80/1
Jon Fosse
80/1
Mahasweta Devi
80/1
Peter Carey
80/1
Marge Piercy
80/1
Mary Gordon
80/1
William H. Gass
80/1
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
80/1
Vassilis Alexakis
80/1
Eeva Kilpi
100/1
Michael Ondaatje
100/1
Kjell Askildsen
100/1
Julian Barnes
100/1
Atiq Rahimi
100/1
F. Sionil Jose
100/1
--Previous Message--
: Intriguing. My only guess is that it will be someone
: that I have never heard of. It generally is.
:
: I would think not Roth. He lacks the political
: correctness that they seem to love. Of course they
: gave it to Saul Bellow. Bellow won as just a young
: pup of 61. He lived almost thirty more years.
: Morrison was only 62 when she won. So maybe Murakami
: or Rushdie.
:
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: It will be announced Thursday. Any predictions or
: favorites?
:
: Will the prize committee jump on the Arab Spring
: bandwagon and select someone like Nawal El Saadawi?
:
: There hasn't been an Asian winner in a while, so is it
: Haruki Murakami's turn? The publishers of his
: forthcoming huge novel 1Q84 would love that.
:
: Will they finally end the ban on American winners and
: give it to Philip Roth? The last American was Toni
: Morrison in 1993.
:
: Roth is 78 as is Cormac McCarthy. Umberto Eco is 79,
: as is Nawal El Saadawi. It may be now or never for
: them. Murakami is 62 and Salman Rushdie only 64, so
: they'll probably have to wait.
:
: Or will it be someone we've never heard of, probably a
: poet. The last poet was Wislawa Szymborska in 1996.
:
:
:
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