The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday, October 11th. The best roundup of likely candidates is at the Literary Saloon, as per usual. M.A. Orthofer runs down a list of contenders, offering pros, cons, and long shots.
My predictions would go in the direction of the African writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o or Israeli writer Amos Oz. I wrote a few years ago why Cormac McCarthy, as much as I love him, isn’t a strong contender, and why any recluse (sorry, Pynchon) isn’t going to win either. If any American is going to win, it will be Philip Roth.
Mo Yan won’t win. So far, the only Chinese Nobel winners have been “anti-China” winners, such as the Dalai Lama and Liu Xiaobo — the award is designed to show how these individuals stood up and opposed the Chinese regime. Mo Yan is too conciliatory to his motherland to be able to win.
As far as the claims that it’s time for a woman to win, these don’t make sense to me. Out of 108 winners, only 12 women have won the prize. 9 of those women won it between 1901 and 2002. That’s roughly 9%, a truly low number. Over the last decade, three women have won, bumping the percentage up to 30%. I’m not saying that number is high enough, but I am saying it’s enough of a jump that the committee will not be dying to pick a woman. Herta Muller just won it in 2009! So if the Swedes reputable online pharmacy award the Nobel to a woman this year, it won’t have anything to do with her gender.
As far as the Canadians, I can’t see Atwood getting it over Alice Munro. It doesn’t matter than Munro’s output has consisted almost entirely of short stories — she’s a giant and has been regularly named as a frontrunner (not that positive press indicates any kind of a better chance to win — RE: Bob Dylan).
William Trevor has one of the highest odds on Ladbrokes (7/1) but I don’t understand why. Yes, he writes a great deal about Irish politics and has had a long and storied career, but he doesn’t seem to be the kind of figure the Swedes would want to elevate or celebrate. Ignore the bookies on this one.
Haruki Murakami has led the field this year since the odds first came out months ago, likely due to the massive publicity surrounding 1Q84. That alone makes me skeptical that he’ll win it this year. If we’ve learned anything from previous Nobel Prize selections, it’s that barring a leak, the selections don’t seem to be governed by any kind of system or logic and that the selections often are surprising (David Ulin at the LA Times said he’d never even heard of Le Clezio). Count on Murakami for a Nobel, yes, but count on it five years from now. He’s still young, and the committee needs to squeeze in folks before they pass on to the literary celebrations in the sky.
