With the onset of autumn, we enter the Nobel season; that time of the year when writers’ haunts are ablaze with the heat of argument about the favorite candidates.
Through September, members of the Swedish Academy confer. Having read the work of the candidates, the judges discuss the merits of the different candidates' contribution.
This is not as easy as it may seem, since a candidate needs a majority nomination; more than half of the votes cast.
It follows that given the eclectic nature of judges and their different tastes much schnapps must be consumed before their eminences agree.
Later, in early October, the Academy chooses the Nobel Laureate in Literature and his or her name is announced.
Unless something strange happens, (sometimes it does in the arcane of the Swedish Academy) Haruki Murakami will be the next Nobel Laureate in Literature. And rightly so; his prose is to kill for.
On September 30, 2012, Mark McDonald from The International Herald Tribune (the global edition of The New York Times) reported that Mr. Murakami was the favorite.
HONG KONG — The 2102 Nobel Prize in literature will soon be announced, and oddsmakers are listing the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami as the favorite.
According to the betting firm Ladbroke’s, Mr. Murakami, 63, is the frontrunner at 5-1 odds, followed by Bob Dylan at 10-1. The Chinese novelist Mo Yan is next at 12-1, tied with the Dutch author Cees Nooteboom.
None of the four names listed need the money, as they are already wealthy, but besides the greatest recognition and accolade that a writer can hope for, the current amount of the Nobel Literature Prize is 8 million Swedish Kroner (SEK), or a little over $1.2 million.
I doubt Mr. Dylan could win after he was classed as “some literary UFO” in the 2011 hype preceding the nomination. He’s already won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, but it was for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power," not literature. This leaves Mo Yan and Cees Nooteboom, both extraordinary cult writers, but in my opinion in a different league from Haruki Murakami. So I’ve smashed my piggybank and bet $20 on Murakami with the devious intention of investing the profit in a bottle of Lagavulin.
Any bets?