After yet another year of controversies, we’re tipped to see a ‘safe’ laureate this year, when the announcement comes at 12pm BST (1pm CEST)
Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé has very short odds this morning (not that that always helps you win the Nobel). She was the first and only winner of the New Academy prize in literature in 2018, a one-off award intended to fill the void left by the cancellation of the Nobel.
Last year, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel prize in literature, said the jury needed to “widen our perspective”, given that the award’s previous two winners, Kazuo Ishiguro and Bob Dylan, were both men writing in English. “We had a more Eurocentric perspective on literature and now we are looking all over the world,” he said. “Previously it was much more male-oriented. Now we have so many female writers who are really great, so we hope the prize and the whole process of the prize has been intensified and is much broader in its scope.”
However, the jury ended up choosing two more Europeans – Austria’s Peter Handke and Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk. WIll this change this year?
