Since Kazuo Ishiguro was named the 2017 Nobel Laureate in Literature, seven members of the Swedish Academy have been replaced and the group within the academy that has special responsibility for the Nobel Prize - the Nobel Committee - has been expanded with five external experts.

When it was announced in May that the 2018 award would be postponed, the then committee had already come a long way in selecting the winner. Two awards in literature are now being awarded: one for 2018 and one for 2019.

Possible winners

And who could be the prize winners? Canadian author, poet and antique researcher Anne Carson has been a conceivable name for several years, but has now sailed up as one of the favorites. Babel's book panel, publishers, literary critics and librarians have, in various newspaper articles, proclaimed Carson a possible winner. She also tops the betting companies' lists of most likely winners.

Even the Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid, who has written extensively on British colonial empire in the Caribbean, is given good chances. In an interview with SVT's Babel, however, she says she is not so keen on the price.

Received the New Academy Award

Another Caribbean writer who might have the chance is Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe. Condé also writes about colonialism and post-colonialism and was awarded the 2018 New Academy Literature Prize, initiated by journalist Alexandra Pascalidou, to fill the void after the deferred award.

Some other possible winners that have been mentioned are: Mila Ulitskaja, Margaret Atwood, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Mircea Cărtărescu.