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Frenzied speculation in countdown to Nobel Literature Prize
2008-10-09
The Swedish Academy was preparing Thursday to reveal the name of the 2008 Nobel Literature Prize laureate, as speculation hit fever pitch just hours before the big announcement. The list of nominees is never disclosed, leaving observers to speculate wildly up until the moment the Academy's permanent secretary Horace Engdahl reads out the name of the laureate at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT). In the run-up to this year's prize announcement, French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has been widely tipped to win in Stockholm's literary circles, while Romanian-born German author Herta Mueller and South Korean poet Ko Un also figure among the favourites. Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet suggested the prize could go to a poet or an American this year, citing the names of US author Philip Roth and Syrian poet Adonis. Other names making the rounds include Australia's Les Murray, John Ashbery of the United States, Denmark's Inger Christensen and Sweden's Tomas Transtroemer. Yet other possibilities include Israeli author Amos Oz, Canada's Margaret Atwood, Czech writer Arnost Lustig and French poet Yves Bonnefoy are possibilities, as well as Joyce Carol Oates, Japan's Haruki Murakami and Italy's Antonio Tabucchi. In order to second-guess the committee, some observers point to continents, countries or languages, as well as genres that have not been awarded for a while. It has been a long time since South America and Africa have had a literature laureate, so if the Academy is thinking along those lines possible winners could be Mexico's Carlos Fuentes, Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa or Assia Djebar of Algeria. Last year the prize went to British novelist Doris Lessing.
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