by Marc Bain
Thursday at 11 a.m. GMT (that’s 7 a.m. ET), the Nobel Academy will award its 2009 prize for literature. Like every other year, the announcement will be met with a mix of jubilation, consternation, and plain-old head scratching, as some of us will feel a writer has finally been recognized, others will feel their favorite has been overlooked, and many more could end up wondering who the author is to begin with (quick, what’s the best book you’ve read by last year’s winner, J.M.G. Le Clézio?) But for those of us not in contention for the Nobel, the fun isn’t in the winning, it’s in the speculating.
The blogosphere’s literati have been abuzz about the betting odds published by British bookmakers Ladbrokes. The odds are constantly in flux (check out one site's calculation of them here), but for the most part Israeli novelist Amos Oz has held at the top of the list with a 4 to 1 shot, followed by Algerian author Assia Djebar (5 to 1) and American writer Joyce Carol Oates (recently up to 5 to 1 from 7 to 1). How well do these odds reflect the Nobel committee’s thinking? Well, perennial favorites like the Syrian poet Adonis rightly have pretty good odds. But then again, Bob Dylan’s chances of winning (25 to 1) are apparently far better than those of Umberto Eco (66 to 1), the Italian writer of intellect-bending literary blockbusters like Foucault’s Pendulum. The Nobel decision can be a complete surprise, too. Who really expected Elfriede Jelinek to win in 2006? In other words, the odds are fun to argue over, but we're not sure if we'd put money on them.
Aside from an author’s actual writing, what other factors might be in play? Last year, the permanent secretary of the Nobel jury, Horace Engdahl, caused an uproar when he said American writers were too parochial, too isolated, and didn’t participate “in the big dialogue of literature.” Ironically, Engdahl’s comments could mean a bump for American candidates. The Nobel Academy has seemed eager to distance itself from Engdahl’s opinion, and Peter Englund, who has since replaced Engdahl as permanent secretary, said recently that the awards have been too “Eurocentric.” There has also been talk that a poet is overdue—the last to win was Wislawa Szymborska in 1996—which bodes well for Adonis and the South Korean poet Ko Un. Language also matters. No Spanish-language writer has won since Octavio Paz in 1990, which could make Mario Vargas Llosa an attractive choice.
A sampling of top contenders:
Amos Oz—Israel’s best-known novelist, Oz writes frequently about the way politics intersect with personal life in Israel, and he’s been a persistent advocate of peace. American audiences are probably most familiar with his 2004 memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, which ranges from beautiful to brutal and earned plenty of critical accolades here in the United States.
Joyce Carol Oates—America’s foremost woman of letters, Oates has been incredibly prolific, writing more than 50 novels, 32 short-story collections, innumerable essays and 8 volumes of poetry. She’s examined loss, grief, sex, violence, the female experience in America and just about everything else, always with grace and intelligence.
Assia Djebar—Djebar’s work focuses on two major conflicts: being a woman in a male-dominated world, and being a post-colonial Algerian who is caught between the Arab world and France. A talented novelist, she has also published poetry and journalism and has worked as a filmmaker.
Philip Roth—Roth is the quintessential Jewish-American writer, mixing equal doses of sex and shame into his early studies of young men. His more recent work has focused on the middle-aged male, and he has deftly chronicled middle-class American life in his books.
Adonis—Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, who writes under the name Adonis, is widely regarded as the most important contemporary poet in the Arabic language. His work deals both with the history of the Arab world and the modern issues that face it. The academy was rumored to be leaning toward the Syrian-born writer in 2003 as a way of making a political point against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but the prize has been elusive for him.
Mario Vargas Llosa—A journalist as well as a novelist, he has written several works of fiction and nonfiction—he even writes a regular column for the Spanish paper El País. The Peruvian writer pushes the boundaries of historical fiction and has looked at the way individuals clash with politics in his narratives.
Ko Un—The South Korean poet has written short lyrics as well as lengthy epics, drawing his material from decades of experience in which he has seen South Korea’s struggles with Japanese occupation, the Korean war, and the transition to democracy. He’s also been a political activist most of his life, to the point of having been imprisoned multiple times for his activism.
Tomas Tranströmer—He began writing accomplished nature poems but has gradually shifted to more personal works about the often uncertain search for meaning. Normally he has pretty good odds, and if a poet is going to be chosen then he’s certainly a frontrunner, but the fact that he’s Swedish could be a strike against him if the jury wants to look outside Europe.
Alice Munro—The Canadian writer is fawned over by critics, and people with influence in literary circles regularly say they’d like to see her win. But she largely writes short stories, and no writer working primarily in short-story form has ever won. That could make her a longshot, but it would be no surprise to see the Nobel jury take a new direction.
On a sadder note, John Updike, who was perpetually on the short list to win, died earlier this year. He joins the illustrious group of writers who never received the prize but certainly should have, including James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Vladimir Nabokov.
