STOCKHOLM
\nSwiss postmodernist novelist Christian Kracht and Australia\u2019s Gerald Murnane and Alexis Wright are among the favourites for the Nobel literature prize, experts told media ahead of the Swedish Academy\u2019s much-anticipated announcement on Thursday. The academy made history last year by choosing South Korea\u2019s Han Kang, making her the first Asian woman to win the prize.
\nBut this year several experts predicted the winner would likely be a man \u2014 and European to boot. \u201cI could see it going to a European man \u2014 that the Academy could do that with a clear conscience because they chose a non-European woman last year,\u201d Sveriges Radio culture critic Lina Kalmteg told media.
\nKracht, Hungary\u2019s Laszlo Krasznahorkai and Peter Nadas, and Romania\u2019s Mircea Cartarescu are among those whose names are making the rounds. Kracht, a 58-year-old German-language postmodernist author who writes about pop culture and consumerism, is a favourite in literary circles, Bjorn Wiman, culture editor at Swedish paper of reference Dagens Nyheter, told media.
\nAt this year\u2019s Gothenburg Book Fair held annually a few weeks before the Nobel announcement, \u201cmany members of the Swedish Academy were there, sitting in the front row during his event\u201d, Wiman said.\u201dAnd that is usually a sure sign,\u201d he said, adding that the same thing happened when Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek won the prize in 2004.
\nSince it was first awarded in 1901, the Nobel literature prize has been dominated by Western male writers. There are only 18 women among the 121 laureates, and only very few prizewinners have bodies of work written in Asian or Middle Eastern languages. No African languages are represented. A 2018 #MeToo scandal left the Academy in tatters, and more than half of its members ended up being replaced.
\nThe institution promised to broaden the prize, both geographically and linguistically, and since then, there has been a more even gender balance among laureates. Since 2018, every other laureate has been a woman. \u201cAuthors like Han Kang would have been unthinkable five or six years ago,\u201d Wiman said, noting that the Academy previously tended to honour older men and she was only 53 when she won.
\nBut, Wiman said, he also thinks this year the award would likely go to a man \u201cfrom the Anglo-Saxon, German or French-language world\u201d. Kalmteg said that the list of previous laureates shows a pattern of sorts: \u201cit\u2019s kind of \u2018OK, this year was a European, now we can look a little further afield. And now we go back to Europe. Last year was a woman, let\u2019s choose a man this year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STOCKHOLM Swiss postmodernist novelist Christian Kracht and Australia\u2019s Gerald Murnane and Alexis Wright are among the favourites for the Nobel literature prize, experts told media ahead of the Swedish Academy\u2019s much-anticipated announcement on Thursday. The academy made history last year by choosing South Korea\u2019s Han Kang, making her the first Asian woman to win the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-507320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n