The 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature: Countdown!

[David Morris]

http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-2011-nobel-prize-in-literature-countdown/

News flash: The usually coy Swedish Academy has announced that the
Nobel will be awarded Thursday. In the home stretch, Ladbrokes keeps
Adonis and Tranströmer to win and place, while Murakami moves into
show; Unibet has Murakami leading, with Adonis passing Vijay dan Detha
into second and Les Murray breaking from the pack to move into third.
The lively exchanges here last month and last week show support for
all of the above, as well as others expected and otherwise. When we
speculate about the winner, we're also betting on nation, language,
and genre, and it's tempting to calculate the odds on the basis of
past awards. The last poet to win was Poland's Wisława Szymborska in
1996; is it time for another? In that case, who's more likely: Adonis,
who would be the first Arabic writer since Naguib Mahfouz in 1988 and
the first Syrian to win a Nobel in any category, or Tranströmer, who
would be the first Swede since 1974's dead heat between Eyvind Johnson
and Harry Martinson? Can we assume that Mario Vargas Llosa's 2010
prize eliminates Latin Americans? Does that extend to all writers
working in Spanish? So: keep those comments coming.