Daniel del Real
Moderator
Also agree about the Faulkner's quote. He is talking about the voice of a writer, not only a poet. This doesn't tell anything, sorry folks!
Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 Speculation
- Thread starter Septularisen
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Also agree about the Faulkner's quote. He is talking about the voice of a writer, not only a poet. This doesn't tell anything, sorry folks!
EllisIsland
Reader
I wouldn't count on the factual accuracy of any statements made by Ladbrokes people. In the Guardian article last week they claimed stuff that is simply not true.
e.g. Ladbrokes claimed:
"Of course there are other authors who will shorten in price, and those who will lengthen. However, on only one occasion has there been a significant shortening in odds on an author who hasn’t won: Svetlana Alexievich, who was supported from 50/1 down to 4/5 in 2013. She then went on to win in 2015,”
and that is just incorrect, e.g. we saw a race to the top between Ngugi and McCarthy in 2010 and, as we know, neither of them won the prize, but Vargas Llosa did, who, by the way, did not move at all...
They just want to provoke people to put as much money as possible on people who will surely not win (e.g. DeLillo or Dylan).
e.g. Ladbrokes claimed:
"Of course there are other authors who will shorten in price, and those who will lengthen. However, on only one occasion has there been a significant shortening in odds on an author who hasn’t won: Svetlana Alexievich, who was supported from 50/1 down to 4/5 in 2013. She then went on to win in 2015,”
and that is just incorrect, e.g. we saw a race to the top between Ngugi and McCarthy in 2010 and, as we know, neither of them won the prize, but Vargas Llosa did, who, by the way, did not move at all...
They just want to provoke people to put as much money as possible on people who will surely not win (e.g. DeLillo or Dylan).
Septularisen
Reader
Just watched a Nobel speculation with the head of the culture section of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper and a critic. They went through some of the continents and writers.
*Europe: Mircea Cartarescu, Jon Fosse, Peter Handke and Adunis (of whom they said that he is a representative of both the Arab World and Europe, I've never read him but what do you who have done it say about that?)
*Africa: Nuruddin Farah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Maryse Condé (who is from Guadeloupe in the Carribbean but I've never read her so maybe her works take place in Africa?) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who they said is a possible contender in the future, which makes me wonder why they bring her up at all?)
*North America (USA): Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy (They said that the SA could award either broad late realism (Roth/Oates) or Post-modernism (DeLillo/Pynchon) and said that DeLillo would probably be a writer that many SA members could be united around)
The Faulkner quote was posted Sunday afternoon Swedish time and since the Nobel Prize facebook page is run by the Nobel Foundation (I guess?) I don't think the Swedish Academy has given them their decision yet. But I have no idea how long in advance they do.
*Europe: Mircea Cartarescu, Jon Fosse, Peter Handke and Adunis (of whom they said that he is a representative of both the Arab World and Europe, I've never read him but what do you who have done it say about that?)
*Africa: Nuruddin Farah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Maryse Condé (who is from Guadeloupe in the Carribbean but I've never read her so maybe her works take place in Africa?) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who they said is a possible contender in the future, which makes me wonder why they bring her up at all?)
*North America (USA): Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy (They said that the SA could award either broad late realism (Roth/Oates) or Post-modernism (DeLillo/Pynchon) and said that DeLillo would probably be a writer that many SA members could be united around)
The Faulkner quote was posted Sunday afternoon Swedish time and since the Nobel Prize facebook page is run by the Nobel Foundation (I guess?) I don't think the Swedish Academy has given them their decision yet. But I have no idea how long in advance they do.
That´s interesting. Somehow it seems quite possible.
Today I´ll go to my local library and borrow one of his books - Falling Man (it´s shorter).
[Unibet: Ngugi 9 -> 5]
[By the way, the British edition of Delillo´s books has some amazing covers.]
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Point Omega came out a few years ago and is a quick read as well. I really enjoyed it. Even if he doesn't win, Delillo is worth looking into. I realized that I also have a book by Ngugi wa Thiong'o at home as well, so if he wins, I'll finally have an excuse to take a look at it. The more I think about it, the more I'd be glad if Murakami won. I don't know a thing about Japanese literature, but the guy sure writes good books. I've realized that my skepticism is only fueled by my own jealousy, in the sens that if he wins, I think that many of us will be disheartened by the fact many casual mainstream readers will be familiar with his work.
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redhead
Blahblahblah
And 2013 was the year Fosse also rose to prominence on betting sites with a similar jump.
Also, DeLillo has moved a little up, to 12/1 on Ladbrokes, though that's probably more that guardian article than anything else.
How many people outside Sweden know about these festivals and the authors invited to them? If the festivals are creating the buzz it implies that the majority of those betting are Swedes. Which is possible but I doubt it. So, I think the organisers are doing their own betting by inviting them and basing it on the rumours in Stockholm.
That Delillo has been rising on the betting lists and closing in on his country men Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates suggests people believing a US author was among the final five. And the Faulkner quote would indicate that even though it is doubtful the SA would play a game like that.
EllisIsland
Reader
No, I don't think so. You have to understand that there is not necessary much betting going on in case the odds of one candidate change. Even very few (a single?) bet from Sweden can have a significant impact on the odds of a potential candidate. There have been articles based on insider information that suggesst that you do not even have to place large amounts of money for this (~10-100 Euro). I remember an article from a couple of years ago where the journalist claimed to have caused a significant change in odds for an author (was it Ngugi?) by just placing 10 Euros or so.
I am pretty sure that DeLillo did not win. However, the fact that the odds of Ngugi are now very similar at Unibet and Ladbrokes and that he is at the top of both sides really seems to indicate that he has won the Nobel prize. One more day and we will find out...
adaorardor
Reader
It's pure guesswork as to what type of writer (genre / language / national origin / etc) will win in any given year. Makes much more sense to guess which living writer(s) will be the next to win in each of those categories...Here are my thoughts, anyone else want to play the game this way?
I'm breaking it down by language: Which living writer(s) will win the prize writing in...
English? Ngugi will get it soon, perhaps this year. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will probably get it, but not for another ten or fifteen years. In the meantime, I think they'll give it to an Indian writer writing in English - probably Rohinton Mistry or Amitav Ghosh...Arundhati Roy a dark horse if she keeps writing novels. Other potential medium-term wild cards - Anne Carson, Ursula K Le Guin, John Berger, Cormac McCarthy if The Passenger is great, or even Michael Ondaatje.
French? Marie NDiaye will get it, but it might take five or ten years. Dark horse: Patrick Chamoiseau.
Spanish? So many contenders but no clue who will get it, I think Marias will miss out, and most of the main Latin American contenders wouldn't appeal to the SA (Aira / Vallejo / Rey Rosa / Cohen / Bellatin / etc). So next one may be a poet - Ernesto Cardenal? Clara Janes?? Guadalupe Nettel has a great shot but it'll take a while.
German? So many great candidates but not sure which ones would appeal to the SA. Handke the elephant in the room won't get it due to the politics. If I had to bet, I'd bet on Emine Sevgi Ozdamar. Maybe Marcel Beyer or Ilija Trojanow or Ursula Krechel...Wouldn't be surprised to see no German-language writers for a while.
Portuguese? I still think Lobo Antunes has a chance. If not, next one will be Valter Hugo Mae or Mia Couto.
Italian? No clue...but if I had to bet on one I'd bet on Roberto Calasso. Or maybe Antonio Moresco?
Greek? Aris Fioretos a dark horse.
Japanese? Yoko Tawada will get it IMO.
Chinese? I think Bei Dao will get it soon...and Liao Yiwu has a great shot to get it one day.
Korean? Ko Un will not get it, but Hwang Sok-Yong has a good shot, or if not him then maybe Han Kang in a while.
Russian? Mikhail Shishkin will get it, perhaps soon.
Eastern European languages? Olga Tokarczuk will get it. One but only one of Nadas / Krasznahorkai / Cartarescu / Albahari / Ugresic will get it (too bad, all deserving)
Nordic languages? Sofi Oksanen has a shot but it'll take a while.
Hebrew? I still think they'll give it to either Amos Oz or David Grossman. But I also think Yoel Hoffmann is a strong dark horse, or a female writer like Zeruya Shalev or Ronit Matalon or Orly Castel-Bloom. Dror Burstein could be a good bet for the far future.
Arabic? No clue...if I had to bet I'd bet on Elias Khoury. Just as good a chance they give it to Abdelfattah Kilito or Amin Maalouf I guess.
Afrikaans? Either Marlene van Niekirk or Antjie Krog will get it.
I'm breaking it down by language: Which living writer(s) will win the prize writing in...
English? Ngugi will get it soon, perhaps this year. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will probably get it, but not for another ten or fifteen years. In the meantime, I think they'll give it to an Indian writer writing in English - probably Rohinton Mistry or Amitav Ghosh...Arundhati Roy a dark horse if she keeps writing novels. Other potential medium-term wild cards - Anne Carson, Ursula K Le Guin, John Berger, Cormac McCarthy if The Passenger is great, or even Michael Ondaatje.
French? Marie NDiaye will get it, but it might take five or ten years. Dark horse: Patrick Chamoiseau.
Spanish? So many contenders but no clue who will get it, I think Marias will miss out, and most of the main Latin American contenders wouldn't appeal to the SA (Aira / Vallejo / Rey Rosa / Cohen / Bellatin / etc). So next one may be a poet - Ernesto Cardenal? Clara Janes?? Guadalupe Nettel has a great shot but it'll take a while.
German? So many great candidates but not sure which ones would appeal to the SA. Handke the elephant in the room won't get it due to the politics. If I had to bet, I'd bet on Emine Sevgi Ozdamar. Maybe Marcel Beyer or Ilija Trojanow or Ursula Krechel...Wouldn't be surprised to see no German-language writers for a while.
Portuguese? I still think Lobo Antunes has a chance. If not, next one will be Valter Hugo Mae or Mia Couto.
Italian? No clue...but if I had to bet on one I'd bet on Roberto Calasso. Or maybe Antonio Moresco?
Greek? Aris Fioretos a dark horse.
Japanese? Yoko Tawada will get it IMO.
Chinese? I think Bei Dao will get it soon...and Liao Yiwu has a great shot to get it one day.
Korean? Ko Un will not get it, but Hwang Sok-Yong has a good shot, or if not him then maybe Han Kang in a while.
Russian? Mikhail Shishkin will get it, perhaps soon.
Eastern European languages? Olga Tokarczuk will get it. One but only one of Nadas / Krasznahorkai / Cartarescu / Albahari / Ugresic will get it (too bad, all deserving)
Nordic languages? Sofi Oksanen has a shot but it'll take a while.
Hebrew? I still think they'll give it to either Amos Oz or David Grossman. But I also think Yoel Hoffmann is a strong dark horse, or a female writer like Zeruya Shalev or Ronit Matalon or Orly Castel-Bloom. Dror Burstein could be a good bet for the far future.
Arabic? No clue...if I had to bet I'd bet on Elias Khoury. Just as good a chance they give it to Abdelfattah Kilito or Amin Maalouf I guess.
Afrikaans? Either Marlene van Niekirk or Antjie Krog will get it.
pinkunicorn
Reader
I find three changes in the odds this morning:
Don DeLillo moves yet a bit up (15 -> 13), in line with earlier movements.
Two days ago, Navid Kermani entered the list at 101. Now, that is halved to 51.
Finally, Daniel Kahneman is another new addition at 26. It's worth noting that he already has a Nobel - in economics. As far as I can see, he hasn't done any fiction.
Don DeLillo moves yet a bit up (15 -> 13), in line with earlier movements.
Two days ago, Navid Kermani entered the list at 101. Now, that is halved to 51.
Finally, Daniel Kahneman is another new addition at 26. It's worth noting that he already has a Nobel - in economics. As far as I can see, he hasn't done any fiction.
Over at the Complete Review's Literary Saloon blog the suggested favourite is Ngugi (who, by the way, isn't an English language author since rejecting the language thirty years ago with much polemics in favour of his native Kikuyu). Other contenders named include Jon Fosse, Amos Oz and Les Murray.
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/
Only 24 hours to go before we find out whether the Faulkner quote meant anything or not.
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/
Only 24 hours to go before we find out whether the Faulkner quote meant anything or not.
Aris Fioretos was born in Sweden and writes primarily in Swedish but also in German (his mother is from Austria). His name usually comes up in speculations about future members of the SA. Maybe one day he will open the door and say his own name?
But thank you for mentioning a lot of writers who are new to me!
Corswandt
FAFO
That's not jealousy but rather snobbery.
Valter Hugo Mãe? Aren't you just throwing names around perchance?
Lobo Antunes' chances probably died as early as the day Saramago got the prize.
Mia Couto is very likely to win the Nobel within the next 7-10 years on the other hand. The second vol. of his great trilogy just came out in PT.
Maalouf writes in French. Kilito also mostly in French it seems.
Orthofer's standing is evidence of just how far OCD nerdiness and too much free time can take you. As far as I know he has zero credentials, and his reviews smack of autodidacticism (the platitudes, the parentheticals, the - perhaps intentional? - total lack of comparisons, context or references to the history of literature or literary movements). But I suppose nobody bothers to do what he does, at least with such thoroughness.
It may be that it doesn't take much to move the authors up the betting lists. My main point is that the festival planners of the main literary festivals in Sweden and especially Stockholm have their ears to the ground and invite authors based on the information they are picking up so close to the centre of it all. So, it is not a coincidence that Ngugi and DeLillo will be in Stockholm at the end of the month. E.g. they invited Svetlana Alexievitch in 2013, the first year she was hotly tipped for the prize. I for one will have my eyes on their guest lists from now and use it in my Nobel speculations.
EllisIsland
Reader
Yes, I think so, too. Good Point. Otherwise, these organizers should be fired because they wouldn't do their work properly.
What do you mean? They haven't even won the prize, yet! So the only thing you can relate this to is the Ladbrokes list. Again, I think there is a mixup up cause and effect in your argumentation. You have only provided one single example, Alexievitch, and even in this example it took two more years... These authors are invited to book fairs because they have new books and because they are good or at least popular in Sweden. There are hundreds of other writers invited to these festivals. Some of them are reasonable Nobel candidates, most are not. So when these resonable candidates visit the book fairs, people get reminded that they could win the prize and thus put some money on them at Ladbrokes. Sometimes one of them wins the prize in the following years. Most of them will never win the prize. And, I assume, in some years you will not find any future winner at all among the participants of the book events. So what?
To further illustrate my point: you only brought up DeLillo in the first place because he is going up on the Ladbrokes list. They are dozens of other writers on the Ladbrokes list who have been to one or the other of these book festivals in the last couple of years. So why don't you bring them up? Think about it, the book festivals are planned long before the short list is fixed for each particular year...
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This festival started in 2013 and seems to be the first international literary festival in Stockholm for quite a while. According to their site they only invite up to 10 international authors each year. In the last three years they have invited Olga Tokarczuk, Marie NDiaye, Mikhail Shishkin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Enrique Villa-Matas, to name some of the authors who have featured prominently in the discussion here over the last weeks. It tells me that this particular festival reflects what is widely seen as great writing in world literature and the Noble Prize discussion in the literary community in Sweden. So, based on my feeble attempts at reasoning, it looks like they are in better position to bet on future Nobel prize winner than most festival organisers. I do not care which smoke signals you follow in your speculations about possible Nobel Prize winners but this is one of mine.
Indeed. I don't mind if a well-known and mainstream writer or a relatively unknown and undertranslated one wins the prize. Obscurity does not automatically guarantee great literature just as popularity doesn't.
As for Orthofer, well, he isn't the best literary critic or tastemaker, but as a collector of literary news around the world he's unparalleled.
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