Who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2025? Among the writers considered favorite this year are Mircea Cărtărescu
On Thursday afternoon, in Stockholm the Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced, so that period of the year arrived again when readers, editors, translators, libraries and, of course, writers, try to predict who will win, writes El Pais.
Beyond the personal affinities that can shadow the judgment in such discussions, what do the bookmakers say? According to Ladbrokes, one of the largest international betting houses, the Chinese writer Can Xue and Hungarian László Krasznahorkai are at the forefront this year.
They are followed by several authors: Cristina Rivera Garza from Mexico, Enrique Vila-Matas, Gerald Mornane from Australia, Thomas Pynchon and Mircea Cărtărescu.
As a parenthesis, Can Xue was considered a favorite and last year, when the Nobel Prize for Literature was finally won by the South Korean writer Han Kang.
The corroboration of the quotas from several bookmakers, as they were compiled by the Nicerodds website, places Indian Amitav Ghosh at the forefront this year.
In addition to the mentioned writers, other favorites are constantly highlighted: Japanese author Haruki Murakami, British-American Salman Rushdie, Canadian poet Anne Carson and Jamaica Kincaid, originally from Antigua. Other names rated well on the lists are Canadian Margaret Atwood, Russian Liudmila Ulitkaia and Ersi Sotiropoulos (Greece).
Language and Geography in choosing the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
The geographical factors and policies also return to the annual discussions about who will receive the Nobel Prize, and they could give them an advantage in 2025 to the poet Syrian Adonis, another name considered favorite for years. The daily El Pais notes that other broader considerations could also favor the Spanish -language writers, given that it has already passed 15 years since an author who writes in Spanish received the distinction. The Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa was in 2010 the laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
If, instead, the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh would only become the second author in India honored with this prize, after the famous Rabindranath Tagore, in 1913.
In an own analysis published earlier this week, the AFP agency sees things slightly different and notes that a West would be favorite this year.
According to the French press agency, one of the great favorite is the Swiss Christian Kracht, considered one of the most important contemporary authors in German. At the Göteborg Book Fair, which takes place a few weeks before the Nobel Awards season, the “Swedish Academy was present, first and foremost” at Christian Kracht's conference, noted in an interview with AFP Björn Wiman, chief editor of the Dagens Nyheter Culture.
“And this, in general, is a sign that does not fail,” he believes, recalling that the same thing happened and when the Austrian dramaturga Elfinde Jelinek won the prize in 2004. In Wiman's opinion, after Han Kang “it is the turn of a white man from the Anglo-Saxon, German or Francophone linguistic sphere.”
The favorites listed by AFP are also Mircea Cărtărescu, Gerald Murnane, Amitav Ghosh, Anne Carson, American Thomas Pynchon, Chilian Raúl Zurita, Argentine César Airă and Aboriginal Arabic writer Alexis Wright. AFP analysis is based on discussions with literary critics and other specialists in the field, and less on the odds of bookmakers.
Gender parity for choosing the Nobel Laureate for Literature
The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences emphasizes that the Nobel Prize for Literature is a literary distinction and that it awards the value of the work. Six members of the Academy form the jury, which rotates every three years and is currently led by Anders Olsson, aged 76.
Within the jury there is gender parity, and this has also been reflected in the list of winners of the last ten years, which would mean that this year the winner is a man.
Regarding the age of the winners, Han Kang (54 years old), the first Asian woman who received the Nobel Prize for Literature, demonstrated last year – like Olga Tokarczuk in 2019 – that there is no need for a writer to be 70 years old or more to be recognized by the Swedish Academy.
From June to the end of August, the jury and his advisers read the works from the list of nominations, and the deliberations began in September. The notes of these discussions will be made public over 50 years, according to the rules of the Nobel Foundation.
But the verdict will be announced on Thursday afternoon at 2:00 pm, and a writer will receive that famous phone call from the Swedish Royal Academy. The winner of the prize will receive 11 million Swedish crowns (about 870,000 pounds), notes The Guardian.
