Bets, criticism and popular names.. The Nobel Prize for literature in pursuit of diversity may carry a surprise this year

With the date of the announcement of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature approaching tomorrow, Thursday, literary circles are awaiting the name of the crowned to find out whether it will be one of the great writers, or a name that constitutes a discovery.

And some do not rule out a surprise from regulators inclined to highlight obscure authors.

By awarding the prize the last two years to the American poet Louise Gluck and the British novelist of Tanzanian origin, Abdul Razzaq Journa, the Swedish Academy responsible for the "most famous" literary prize chose to highlight authors whose books have not been translated much and are not known even to the publishing sector.

The head of the literature department at Swedish National Radio, Lena Calmtigue, admits that predicting the name of the prize winner "has become more difficult" after last year's result, and recounted how the studio was surprised when Jorna's victory was announced.

As for the head of the cultural department of the Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter", Bjorn Fehmann says, "I think there is a desire for a more well-known name this year, given the surprise of last year."

Academy photo

Today, the Academy is in the process of recovering from a long crisis after a scandal that falls within the framework of the feminist wave "#MeToo" in 2018, and the uproar that sparked the following year by awarding the Nobel Prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke, who took positions in support of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

"The Academy has become concerned with its image in terms of diversity and gender representation in a completely different way than it was before the 2017-2018 scandal," Feiman notes in a statement to AFP.

"Many new people have joined it, with other perspectives and other references," he adds.

In 2020, the Academy also introduced a new external group of experts in different linguistic areas, after it was criticized for its lack of diversity in selecting winners.

Noble female writers

Since the scandal caused by the French Jean-Claude Arnault, husband of the Academy member poet Catarina Frostenson, and having to postpone the announcement of the 2018 prize for a year, the prize has been won by two women, Polish Olga Tokarczuk and then American Louise Gluck, while one man has won it.

This female predominance over the past three years is a reason for optimism for the authors whose names are circulated as qualifications to win, including the American Joyce Carol Oates, the French Annie Ernault and Maris Conde, and the Canadian Margaret Atwood.

Sixteen women have received the prestigious literary prize since its founding, the first of whom was the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf in 1909.

They are also likely to be awarded the prize, the Russian Lyudmila Ulitskaya, whose victory, if it actually happened, would be a message against Russian President Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Ukraine.

Fiman believes that the award of Ulitskaya "will get people to interact" as it highlights the author's opposition to the Kremlin, and Russian culture in the midst of the war in Ukraine.

He stresses that "this kind of intellectual debate about the Nobel Prize is required and desirable."

As for the American Joan Didion, the British, Hilary Mantel, and the Spaniard Javier Marias, whose names have been put forward for a long time, they died this year and will not be able to win the award.

The names of two candidates, the American Joyce Carol Oates, and the Japanese, Haruki Murakami, are widely circulated.

bets

On the betting sites, France's Michel Houellebecq appears likely, ahead of Canadian poet Anne Carson, or Salman Rushdie, who survived an attempted murder in August.

It was only in 2016 that the Academy condemned the fatwa targeting Rushdie, the author of "The Satanic Verses", out of its keenness on impartiality, which angered a number of its members.

Also in use are the Kenyan Ngogi Wathiongo, the Hungarian Laszlo Krasznoorki, the Americans Thomas Pynchon and Don Delilo.

Literary critic Jonas Thinty says, "American postmodern novels have not received any award yet."

Among the other nominees are the Norwegians John Voss and Karl of Knausgaard, who might win the Nobel - if it happens - back to its Scandinavian cradle, more than 10 years after the award of the literature prize to the Swede Tomas Transtromer.

As for literary critic Maria Hemna Ramnihel, she preferred the victory of the French-Moroccan Taher Benjelloun or the Croatian Dubravka Ogresic.

"I think they both have, albeit in a different way, literature on identities," she explains.

"They talk about their identities in a complex way, shedding light on an intertwined reality that is difficult to understand and cannot be explained by simple solutions."

Award Critics

American academic Broughton Feldman believes in his critical book "The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige" that "the prize is widely seen as political, that is, the Nobel Peace Prize disguised as a literary mask."

In 2009, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdel, declared that "Europe is still the center of the literary world" and that "the United States is too isolated, not adequately translating and not really participating in the great dialogue of literature".

In this context, the British novelist and academic Tim Parks doubted that the Swedish members of the committee would often be able to taste Indonesian poetry, for example, or African literature, criticizing in a previous article that the members of the Academy were able to identify the greatest novelists and poets on the international scene, and pointing to their bias towards Scandinavian culture. Since its launch until 2016, 16 Scandinavian writers have won the International Prize out of 113.

Feldman, Parks, and other prize critics look at a long history of what they see as the global prize's political and non-literary biases.

From 1901 to 1912, the Swedish Committee headed by Carl David F. Warsen evaluated the literary quality of works in view of their contribution to humanity's struggle "toward the ideal." Twain, the prize, which was awarded in return for writers who are not well known in our world today.