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Nobel Literature Prize Speculation: Jon Fosse


Myshkin
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There finally appears to be some dynamic on ladbrokes list they put up back in October, which basically reflected the odds before the announcement minus the winner.Lokeed at it today and after something like 11 months without a change Ngugi moved up to 10/1 and Kundera to 16/1 which might be the highest odds for him in a while.Another change is appearance on the list of Chinese poet Bei Dao, whom I don't recall being listed last year, with 20/1 odds.Don't find him a probable candidate since we already had Chinese winner in 2012 and poet winner in 2011.


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  • 2 weeks later...

Ngugi's now at 6/1 odds, behind only Murakami (who's been the top spot for three years running). Svetlana Alexievich is still being taken seriously at 12/1 odds, even though it's been revealed that the only reason Ladbrokes listed odds for her at all last year was because a reporter, in an attempt to test Ladbrokes' system, placed a large bet on her. It's hard to take Ladbrokes' odds seriously since they're based solely on bets placed (hence Joyce Carol Oats still being at 12/1), but it's also hard to discount them entirely since inside information inevitably turns into bets.


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Ladbrokes are acting very weird this year.First they open betting with right after the Alice Monroe announcement with shortened list of candidates the same odds as were just before it and it holds up until now.Then Ngugi odds start to rise first just like last year (albeit to a higher degree) and Jon Fosse's odds have risen to 12/1 also mirroring last year.It's just weird, looking more like trolling than inside information this time if you ask me.


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  • 3 weeks later...

Ngugi has pushed Murakami out of the top spot on Ladbrokes' list, now at 4/1 odds. Unibet (whose primary market is northern Europe) still have Murakami slightly over Ngugi, but the interesting thing is they have Ismail Kadare at 8/1, even though Ladbrokes doesn't have him listed at all. Of course these betting sites don't generally know anything more than we do, and rely too much on public speculation (as evidenced by the odds on Murakami and Alexievich), but still they're a good resource in that any leaks will mostly likely be represented in the betting odds.


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I was afraid the odds this year would continue to be stale till the end, bu at lats some dynamics!Apart for Ngugi, Alexievich moved up to 10/1, Noteboom to 25/1 and Handke to to 16/1 and Richard Ford rather bizarrely entered the list at 33/1. All in all I doubt some inside information is involved, people put two and two together and figured out it's probably going to be Africa's year.


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I was afraid the odds this year would continue to be stale till the end, bu at lats some dynamics!Apart for Ngugi, Alexievich moved up to 10/1, Noteboom to 25/1 and Handke to to 16/1 and Richard Ford rather bizarrely entered the list at 33/1. All in all I doubt some inside information is involved, people put two and two together and figured out it's probably going to be Africa's year.

The only odds I'd suspect of being affected by a leak are Kadare's on Unibet. Nooteboom and Handke are perennial favorites, and as the announcement gets closer bets will start getting placed on them. Alexievich's name came out of nowhere late last year and created quite a stir, and I think that's the biggest thing affecting her odds this year.

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Nooteboom and Handke are perennial favorites

Well, I wouldn't call Handke a perennial favorite, his of course a well known and talented writer (Nobel worthy according to Elfriede Jelinek), but he never was high on the lists as far as I remember, nor mentioned very often in various articles (most of the talk about Murakami and Bob Dylan, but still...) and he is controversial in a way current Academy won't probably like. But I don't think there is inside information about him either, some one probably thought that an Austrian Serbophile author might be a nice bet in a year "celebrating" 100 anniversary of World War I.

Other new arrivals on ladbrokes: Colm Toibin, Don Patterson, Knausgard, Zagajewsky and two highest rated Ismail Kadare with 10/1 and Patrick Modiano 14/1. While all the others I've seen on Unibet, don't think I saw Modiano there, this is might be interesting. Modiano won Austrian State Prize for European Literature and Prix Goncourt (amazingly even though French authors received more Nobels then representatives of any other country, non of the winners managed to win Prix Goncourt) writing mainly about German occupation of France during World War II, so just as Kadare he might be a viable candidate.

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Kadare on Ladbrokes' list now at 10/1 says to me there might well have been a leak about him being on the shortlist. Although it could also just be that someone saw him listed at 8/1 on Unibet and decided to take advantage of the fact that Ladbrokes didn't have him listed by placing a big bet on him. What seems strangest to me is that Ladbrokes didn't have odds on him at all until today. I mean, it's Ismail Kadare.


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What seems strangest to me is that Ladbrokes didn't have odds on him at all until today. I mean, it's Ismail Kadare.

Yeah, the list this year is uncharacteristically short. I'm surprised that Banville, Vila-Matas and Krasznahorkai are not in there.

Some fresh dynamics Alexievich is up to 6/1 (not really surprising, I doubt Swedish newspaper websites are that widely read), Adonis and Modiano join Kadare at 10/1, Handke and Roth join Fosse at 12/1, Peter Nadas rises to 14/1. Djebar, Oates and Kundera fell to 14/1, 16/1 and 25/1 respectively. new additions are Karel Schoeman , Paul Muldoon and Nawal El Saadawi, the later going as high as 20/1.

Thinking a bit more about this, I'm pretty sure last year there was inside information that woman is going to win it, or something suggesting that it is likely (like high number of women in final shortlist), hence Munro, Alexievich, Djebar and Oates rising high towards the end. This year seems to be unusually many poets suddenly appearing in the betting lists, starting with Bei Dao and now with El Saadawi, the usual suspect Adonis of course rises too.I guess we'll see how they fare in the upcoming days, might be someone heard the winner writes poetry or there is poet on the shortlist.

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Yeah, the list this year is uncharacteristically short. I'm surprised that Banville, Vila-Matas and Krasznahorkai are not in there.

Some fresh dynamics Alexievich is up to 6/1 (not really surprising, I doubt Swedish newspaper websites are that widely read), Adonis and Modiano join Kadare at 10/1, Handke and Roth join Fosse at 12/1, Peter Nadas rises to 14/1. Djebar, Oates and Kundera fell to 14/1, 16/1 and 25/1 respectively. new additions are Karel Schoeman , Paul Muldoon and Nawal El Saadawi, the later going as high as 20/1.

Thinking a bit more about this, I'm pretty sure last year there was inside information that woman is going to win it, or something suggesting that it is likely (like high number of women in final shortlist), hence Munro, Alexievich, Djebar and Oates rising high towards the end. This year seems to be unusually many poets suddenly appearing in the betting lists, starting with Bei Dao and now with El Saadawi, the usual suspect Adonis of course rises too.I guess we'll see how they fare in the upcoming days, might be someone heard the winner writes poetry or there is poet on the shortlist.

El Saadawi's odds are interesting, coming out of nowhere as they did. The Swedish Academy won't choose a winner until the day before the announcement, so any leaks will be about the shortlist. I'd bet that Kadare's on the shortlist, but unless he wins this year, we won't know for 50 years.

What about Ursula K Leguin? Just won a National Book Award, writes genre, is American...................................I'll leave quietly.

Fair or not Leguin's got no chance.

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Interesting article. In it Horace Engdahl criticizes Western literature (I think he's learned not to specify American literature) for being too commercial, basically saying that grants and fellowships have made western writers' lives too cozy to produce meaningful literature. But what I found most interesting is his praising of Asian and African literature, which bodes well for Ngugi's chances this year.


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Interesting article. In it Horace Engdahl criticizes Western literature (I think he's learned not to specify American literature) for being too commercial, basically saying that grants and fellowships have made western writers' lives too cozy to produce meaningful literature. But what I found most interesting is his praising of Asian and African literature, which bodes well for Ngugi's chances this year.

It is interesting, but how significant it is depends on how much the other 17 members of the Academy general agree with or are influenced by Engdahl in their own votes on the Nobel.

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The Swedish Academy won't choose a winner until the day before the announcement, so any leaks will be about the shortlist

Hm, I thought that the date of the announcement is determined after the winner is chosen, but shortlist is the more reasonable assumption.

Day before the announcement, but no dynamics. Ngugi is now at 7/2, Australian poet Les Murray is up to 25/1 and Juan Goytisolo entered the list at 33/1, as I recall he also writes poetry, strengthenening a bit my "poet in the shortlist theory"

Interesting article. In it Horace Engdahl criticizes Western literature (I think he's learned not to specify American literature) for being too commercial, basically saying that grants and fellowships have made western writers' lives too cozy to produce meaningful literature

A quote from one of Bulgakov's autobiographical short stories comes to mind :

"I very much would like that government would pay me a salary , so I would do nothing but lie on the floor in my room and write a novel."

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While all the others I've seen on Unibet, don't think I saw Modiano there, this is might be interesting. Modiano won Austrian State Prize for European Literature and Prix Goncourt (amazingly even though French authors received more Nobels then representatives of any other country, non of the winners managed to win Prix Goncourt) writing mainly about German occupation of France during World War II, so just as Kadare he might be a viable candidate.

And we have a winner here.

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Indeed, ladbrokes does it again and somehow finds the identity of the winner, Patrick Modiano wins the prize for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation, becoming 14th laureate from France and the first one to win both Nobel and Prix Goncourt. Peter Englund specifically singled out his detective novel Missing Persons for which he won Prix Goncourt.

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I'm really surprised here, I would never have guessed Modiano. I have to admit I know pretty much nothing about him, so I suppose I'll have to go out and get one of his novels (sounds like Missing Persons is the place to start). It now looks like Modiano's name was leaked, which makes me believe Kadare's name was also leaked. I am a bit disappointed though that they went with a European man, and it wasn't Kundera.


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