The 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature: Countdown!

[Dave Monroe]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 3:28 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

http://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/awards/nobel-literature-prize/nobel-prize-literature-award-2011-e215370438