The winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced today, and bookmakers are heavily counting odds for each potential laureate.
The award goes to "the person who produced the most outstanding work in the ideal direction in the field of literature". The award is decided by the Swedish Academy, a group of 18 people consisting of Swedish writers, linguists, writers, historians and a prominent lawyer, writes nova.rs.
The "Nicer Odds" bookmaker, which compares the odds of numerous bookmakers, showed that the lowest odds for winning Salman Rushdie, who was recently attacked and stabbed, were 13/2 on Tuesday afternoon.
If he wins, the 75-year-old writer would be the first Indian-born author to win since he was a poet Rabindranath Tagore took the prize in 1913.
The attack on Rushdi happened recently, 33 years after he became the Ayatollah Ruholah Khomeini, then the supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill the author a few months after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Although Iran has since distanced itself from the fatwa, it has never been formally rescinded.
Also on the list of "Nicer Odds" of the Nobel Prize for Literature next to Rushdie on Tuesday was a French writer Michel Welbeck, with odds of 5/1. Last year's bookies' favourite, Annie Erno, she topped the list again, with odds of 5/1, while the Canadian poet Anne Carson had odds of 4/1.
"Nicer Odds" also displayed odds for by Haruki Murakami (12 / 1), Margaret Atwood (9/1) i Stephen King (17 / 1).
If the bookmakers are to be believed, a French writer is among the favorites for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022 Pierre Michon (12/1). They are close there Ngugi va Thiong'o, Kenyan novelist, Gerald Murnane, Australian writer and Can Xue, a Chinese novelist and short story writer. Last year, the bookies didn't guess, Haruki Murakami was in the top then, Dubravka Ugrešić, Margaret Atwood, Milan Kundera, Ismail Kadare, June Fosse, Ludmila Ulicka... However, the Nobel was won by someone who no one would have thought of. Tanzanian writer Abulazrak Gurna, won the award last year and more than a million dollars.
Interestingly, he is a South African novelist Ivan Vladislavić (originally from Brač) received a forecast of 25-1 to win the prize on the betting site "Nicer Odds", at the end of September. But those odds have since dropped to 30-1.
Speculations in literary circles say that the prize will still be won by a writer from a Scandinavian country or Asia, if we look at correcting injustices like last year (a writer from Africa had not won the Nobel for 30 years). However, there are those who assume that it will still be someone from Europe.
Popular Karl Uve Knausgaard, the creator of “My Fight” has odds of 30-1, and there is a great deal of speculation surrounding him. At 53, Knausgaard is too young for a Nobel, but it is said that he has the support of at least one member of the Nobel committee.
The "Lihub.com" portal has released its list of writers it thinks deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022.
The following names are in question: Syrian poet Adonis, Kenyan Ngugi va Thiong'o, Norwegian Jun Fose, French Annie Ernot, Canadian Anne Carson and a Kurdish writer Salim Barakat.
In recent years, the Swedish Academy has come under increasing criticism for its choice of winners. Some critics point out that a large number of distinguished authors did not receive or were ever nominated for the Nobel Prize, while others point out that a number of distinguished winners did not even deserve the award. There were also several controversies related to alleged political interests associated with the nomination process and the election itself.
Every year, about a thousand requests are sent, while about 220 of them are returned. The Academy must receive the proposals by February 1, after which they are checked by the Nobel Committee. By April, the Academy makes a shortlist of about 20 candidates. By May, the Committee approves five main candidates. For the next four months, the Academy reads and analyzes the works of five authors. In October, the members of the Academy vote, and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes receives the award. No one receives an award unless they are shortlisted at least twice, which means that some authors have been nominated for years and their work has been regularly reviewed.
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