Every year, the bookies odds predict who might pick up the highest prize in literature. Every year, they’re completely wrong.
Tomorrow, the latest laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced as part of the Nobel committee’s rollout for 2024 winners. Chinese author Can Xue is once again the frontrunner in the bookies odds to win the 2024 prize.
Can, 71, was the top prediction to win last year’s prize. However, she was pipped to the 2023 Nobel by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.
Fosse was considered a somewhat surprising choice for the prize, as his work in plays, novels, poetry and essays rarely appeared in translation beyond his large Norwegian audiences. However, the Nobel committee commended the writer’s extensive bibliography, in particular “Septology”. Published in English by Fitzcarraldo Press, the seven book 1,250-page epic first released between 2019 and 2021 was considered his “magnum opus”.
The Nobel Prize committee has awarded a winner in literature since 1901 and is traditionally the final award announced of the selection. To this day, it has been awarded 116 times to 120 individuals, with 103 men and just 17 women taking home the prize.
To be announced at the Swedish Academy, the winner will also take home 11 million SEK (around €9.7 million).
Looking through the odds that different bookies have put up for the prize just a day before the announcement and the frontrunners are almost identical to those suggested last year. Eventual winner Fosse barely featured in contention. So proceed with a hefty pinch of salt.
FYI, Haruki Murakami may have featured in the top three every year for as long as memory serves but it’s just not going to happen.
Going back through the winners, and it’s been a while since anyone won who looked like a dead cert. It’s starting to look a little like the same circus that dances around a new James Bond announcement. If your name comes up in the conversation it’s almost definitely not you.
Looking back through past winners, either the Swedish Academy picks a comparative unknown – see Fosse – or they go for a popular left-field choice.
Back in 2017, no one was expecting the widely read English-Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro to take home the prize. The year before, even fewer saw Bob Dylan coming.
Nevertheless, here are the forerunners for the 2024 prize:
Can Xue
Different bookies put her odds at between 10/1 and 4/1, but despite the variance, Chinese author Can Xue is reliably assumed the most likely pick for the 2024 prize.
Can, real name Deng Xiaohua, was born in 1953, and grew up under the strain of her parents’ denouncement by the Communist Party as rightists. It’s an experience that has influenced her avant-garde work that broke with the traditional literary styles in China.
Best known for her short-story collections, many have argued that English translations rarely capture the idiosyncratic stylings Can uses. Nevertheless, it seems her most recent novel, 2019’s “Barefoot Doctor” has put her firmly in the sights of the Nobel committee.
She is also known for her insightful literary criticism of authors, including those from the Western canon such as Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Can has also been longlisted twice for the International Booker Prize with her novel “Love in the New Millennium” and short story collection “I Live in the Slums”.
Despite the odds being in her favour, Can was in this exact position a year ago and the award was given to Fosse, considered an underdog for the prize. Good odds are no guarantee this is Can’s year.
Gerald Murnane
Another name to show up in last year’s predictions at the bookies. The Australian writer is often considered the “greatest living English-language writer” and is regularly tipped. It would be the first Australian winner in over 50 years, so perhaps it is time for Gerald Murnane.
Murnane, 85, is one of those writers who few have heard of, but those who have will insist he’s about as great as writers get. Perhaps best known for his 1982 novel “The Plains” and 1988 novel “Inland”, both novels are exemplary of his peculiar self-referential style that comments on his artistry itself.
Haruki Murakami
Once again, people are suggesting it’s finally Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s year. Reader, it isn’t.
Murakami rose to international fame with his nostalgic romance novel “Norwegian Wood” in 1987. Since then, he’s created a name for his running theme of magical realism, exemplified by his novels “Kafka on the Shore” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”.
Murakami has long been touted for the prize, having already won basically every other award in literature. His works have also entered the public consciousness through the myriad adaptations into film, with recent notable additions including the fantastic Burning and the Oscar-winning Drive My Car. This year, the English translation of his 2023 novel “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” was released. It won’t make a difference.
