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The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature: Round Two

Resuming our earier conversation, the speculation continues. Britain's suspiciously accurate Ladbrokes (remember, last year they had Tomas Transtromer in the top five) bets on Haruki Murakami at 5:1, followed by Bob Dylan (per an earlier commenter: oh, honestly) at 10:1, Mo Yan and Cees Nooteboom at 12:1, and Ismail Kadare, Ko Un, and Adonis at 14:1. The rest of the list looks like a WWB roll call:  Enrique Vila-Matas, Mircea Cartarescu, Adam Zagajewski, Hanan al-Shaykh, Juan Marse, Atiq Rahimi, Kjell Askildsen, Jon Fosse, Vassilis Alexakis, Elias Khoury, Victor Pelevin, Antonio Gamoneda, Sofi Oksanen, Olga Tokarczuk, Tadeusz Różewicz, and Per Petterson. Ladbrokes' rival Unibet falls in line: their money's on Mo Yan, followed by Murakami and Nooteboom. The announcement date is a movable feast, but we're counting on October 11. The odds will change between now and then, so you still have plenty of time to ante up. And remember that a wager on a candidate is also a bet about country, language, and genre: last year a Swedish poet, the year before a Peruvian novelist, before that a Romanian novelist writing in German . . . let the guesses fly.

English

Resuming our earier conversation, the speculation continues. Britain's suspiciously accurate Ladbrokes (remember, last year they had Tomas Transtromer in the top five) bets on Haruki Murakami at 5:1, followed by Bob Dylan (per an earlier commenter: oh, honestly) at 10:1, Mo Yan and Cees Nooteboom at 12:1, and Ismail Kadare, Ko Un, and Adonis at 14:1. The rest of the list looks like a WWB roll call:  Enrique Vila-Matas, Mircea Cartarescu, Adam Zagajewski, Hanan al-Shaykh, Juan Marse, Atiq Rahimi, Kjell Askildsen, Jon Fosse, Vassilis Alexakis, Elias Khoury, Victor Pelevin, Antonio Gamoneda, Sofi Oksanen, Olga Tokarczuk, Tadeusz Różewicz, and Per Petterson. Ladbrokes' rival Unibet falls in line: their money's on Mo Yan, followed by Murakami and Nooteboom. The announcement date is a movable feast, but we're counting on October 11. The odds will change between now and then, so you still have plenty of time to ante up. And remember that a wager on a candidate is also a bet about country, language, and genre: last year a Swedish poet, the year before a Peruvian novelist, before that a Romanian novelist writing in German . . . let the guesses fly.

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