Guessing game ahead of top literature prize

Fevered speculation is raging over who will collect the Nobel Prize in literature, with punters and experts considering language, geography, genre and even age as they try to pin down the winner.

As Stockholm's literary circles try to draw up an "identikit" of the successor to last year's laureate, Canadian Alice Munro, several much-cited names are thought to be in the running.

They include Japan's Haruki Murakami, Adonis from Syria, Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Czech-born Milan Kundera - but no one stands out as favorite.

"Of course we have some ideas, but they are just speculation," Stockholm-based bookseller Mats Olin said.

The name of this year's laureate will be announced on Thursday.

In Stockholm and elsewhere, nobody really knows how the Swedish Academy - which chooses the winner - comes to its decision.

Behind closed doors

The deliberations take place behind closed doors, and are not made public until 50 years later.

What is known is that every year the academy makes a list in February with all the nominations it has received - 210 this time around - which is then cut down, in May, to five names.

In order to make a guess, everybody tries to figure out the logic behind the secretive deliberations of the academy's members.

First, language can be a hint. English-speaking authors have won 27 times, compared to 13 times each for French and German-speaking writers.

Claes Wahlin, a critic at Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, said it is "really very rare that the academy rewards the same language two years in a row", which might exclude English after Munro's award in 2013.

"If the same language is chosen again", he said, "it must be in two parts of the world that are very distant." That would rule out US authors Joyce Carol Oates and Canada's Anne Carson, who are recurring names amid the speculation.

But on the other hand, according to Elise Karlsson, a critic at Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagblad: "Nothing would be more surprising than choosing two Canadians in a row. And the academy likes surprising."

Geography matters

Geography could also be a good criterion.

"It shouldn't take long before Africa is rewarded," publisher Elisabeth Grate said.

African authors have only won four times in the prize's history. The most recent one was South Africa's John M. Coetzee, in 2003.

Ngugi is a likely winner, if the award does not go to Somalia's Nuruddin Farah. He is the type of writer the academy likes, according to Wahlin.

Genre could also be a clue. "With Munro, they also rewarded the art of writing short stories, just like they recognized oral narrative with Dario Fo," he said.

Novelists are overrepresented on the laureate list, which could favor playwrights or poets such as Syria's Adonis, France's Yves Bonnefoy or South Korea's Ko Un.

But the academy could also reward nonfiction and choose Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, Karlsson said.

AFP - AP

(China Daily 10/08/2014 page10)