Books | Was the Nobel laureate already shed? Watch the live broadcast of the award announcement at 2 p.m

Register|Many predict that the Nobel Prize for literature will go to China or Australia, but the Swedish Academy has surprised many times before.

Literary The Nobel Prize will be announced today, Thursday, in Stockholm.

HS will show a live broadcast of the announcement event at 2 p.m. Finnish time.

The selection is made by the 18-member Swedish Academy. There is no official list of candidates, and the choice can be made in any corner of the world.

In recent years, the Nobel Prize has been awarded mostly to Western writers, so this year many expect the Academy to look a little further geographically.

Major the favorite at the moment, also according to the betting agencies, is a Chinese author Can Xue. to Franz Kafka the experimental style of the juxtaposed Can turns the everyday into a surreal one. His works have not been translated into Finnish.

The last time a Chinese writer won was 12 years ago. In 2012, he received the Nobel Prize Mo Yan.

The Australian has been the second favorite in the betting Gerald Murnane. His award would also be defended by the fact that Australia has not won in over 50 years.

American magazine The New York Times named Murnane in 2018 as “the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of”. Murnanen’s international breakthrough The plains (Fin. Sami Pulliainen) appeared in 1982.

Another Australian, Aboriginal writer by Alexis Wright the name emerged, according to news agency AFP, on Wednesday when British bookmaker Ladbrokes suspended his name due to suspicious betting activity. An interruption would indicate a possible leak.

He has also appeared frequently in Veikkaus Salman Rushdie. The Indian-born British author discussed the knife attack on himself two years ago in his work published in April Knife: Reflections after an attempted murder (Fin. Maria Lyytinen).

One of the favorites is Antiguan-American Jamaica Kincaidwho has dealt with, among other things, femininity and the legacy of colonialism in his production.

Academy is known for its efforts to bring lesser-known authors to the attention of a wider audience.

“I think they’ve put a lot of effort into finding a writer who can catch cultural commentators in their pants,” commented the cultural editor of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper from Ruota. Björn Wiman for news agency AFP.

This is what happened in 2021, when a British author born in Zanzibar Abdulrazak Gurnah was chosen as the winner for his writing on exile, colonialism and racism. There was also a surprise in 2016, when the American folk rock icon Bob Dylan won.

So if the old signs are correct, instead of Australia or China, the win could just as easily go to, say, South America or Africa.

Last in the year the Nobel Prize for literature went to a Norwegian Jon Fosse and before him a Frenchman Annie Ernaux.

The prize was awarded for the first time in 1901.

Out of 120 award recipients, only 17 have been women during the award’s history. However, the Swedish Academy has taken steps forward: in the last 20 years, eight women have been awarded.

30 English-language writers and 16 French-language writers have been awarded, but only one Arabic-language writer: an Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz in 1988.

Nobel week will culminate on Friday, when the name of the peace prize recipient will be revealed in Oslo.

The Nobel Prizes will be awarded on December 10 in Stockholm, except for the Peace Prize, which will be awarded in Oslo.