The 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Nobel Prize for Literature is to be awarded this week.  I generally enjoy the run up to the prize more than the awarding of it.  It is great fun to sort through the contenders but then it becomes not so fun when a strange foreigner whose work is not widely available wins.

This year, the top contenders are thought to be:

	Adonis 4/1
		Tomas Transtromer	6/1 Susp.
		Haruki Murakami	8/1 Susp.
		Peter Nadas	10/1 Susp.
		Assia Djebar	12/1 Susp.
		Ko Un	14/1 Susp.
		Les Murray	16/1 Susp.
		Thomas Pynchon	18/1 Susp.
		Philip Roth	20/1 Susp.
		Nuruddin Farah	20/1 Susp.
		Mircea Cartarescu	25/1 Susp.
		Cormac McCarthy	25/1 Susp.
		John Banville	25/1 Susp.
		Joyce Carol Oates	25/1 Susp.
		Amos Oz	25/1 Susp.
		Antonio Lobo Antunes	25/1 Susp.
		Bob Dylan	25/1 Susp.
		K. Satchidanandan	33/1 Susp.
		Colm Toibin	33/1 Susp.
		Don DeLillo	33/1 Susp.
		Claudio Magris	33/1 Susp.
		Adam Zagajewski	33/1 Susp.
		Antonio Tabucchi	33/1 Susp.
		Alice Munro	33/1 Susp.
		A.S. Byatt	33/1 Susp.
		Milan Kundera	33/1 Susp.
		Cees Nooteboom	33/1 Susp.
		Ismail Kadare	33/1 Susp.
		Ngugi wa Thiong'o	33/1 Susp.
		Rajendra Bhandari	40/1 Susp.
		Christa Wolf	40/1 Susp.
		Maya Angelou	40/1 Susp.
		E.L Doctorow	40/1 Susp.
		Margaret Atwood	40/1 Susp.
		Ernesto Cardenal	40/1 Susp.
		Juan Marse	40/1 Susp.
		Bei Dao	40/1 Susp.
		Patrick Modiano	40/1 Susp.
		Vaclav Havel	40/1 Susp.
		Yves Bonnefoy	50/1 Susp.
		Michel Tournier	50/1 Susp.
		Viktor Pelevin	66/1 Susp.
		Ian McEwan	50/1 Susp.
		Salman Rushdie	50/1 Susp.
		Javier Marias	50/1 Susp.
		Carlos Fuentes	50/1 Susp.
		Umberto Eco	50/1 Susp.
		Elias Khoury	50/1 Susp.
		Louise Gluck	50/1 Susp.
		Samih al-Qasim	50/1 Susp.
		Peter Handke	66/1 Susp.
		Gitta Sereny	66/1 Susp.
		William Trevor	50/1 Susp.
		Shlomo Kalo	66/1 Susp.
		Chinua Achebe	66/1 Susp.
		Anne Carson	66/1 Susp.
		A.B Yehoshua	66/1 Susp.
		Juan Goytisolo	66/1 Susp.
		Luis Goytisolo	80/1 Susp.
		David Malouf	80/1 Susp.
		Paul Auster	80/1 Susp.
		Per Petterson	80/1 Susp.
		Jonathan Littell	80/1 Susp.
		Jon Fosse	80/1 Susp.
		Mahasweta Devi	80/1 Susp.
		Peter Carey	80/1 Susp.
		Marge Piercy	80/1 Susp.
		Mary Gordon	80/1 Susp.
		William H. Gass	80/1 Susp.
		Yevgeny Yevtushenko	80/1 Susp.
		Vassilis Alexakis	80/1 Susp.
		Eeva Kilpi	100/1 Susp.
		Michael Ondaatje	100/1 Susp.
		Kjell Askildsen	100/1 Susp.
		Julian Barnes	100/1 Susp.
		Atiq Rahimi	100/1 Susp.
		F. Sionil Jose	100/1

I got this list from Ladbrokes, the English oddsmakers.  Apparently, they give odds on anything.

I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about literature and I still don't recognize maybe 40 percent of these writers.  And some of the names I only know because I've seen them before on other lists of Nobel contenders.  I admit to having a western bias and only reading in English so I know a huge chunk of the world is beyond my purview.  But it is weird to have a Syrian poet and a Swedish poet top the list.  Even if they are richly deserving of it.  Which they very well may be.

Of the names on this list, my clear favorite is the Irish novelist and short story writer William Trevor.  His only serious competition should be from Philip Roth - but Roth is said to have alienated some of the Swedes who award the prize so he is unlikely to win even though he deserves to. 

I am also rooting for A.S. Byatt, Alice Munro, and Don DeLillo.  I've already ordered Haruki Murakami's new book so it would be nice if he were to win.  I like Paul Auster and Ian McEwan and have read most all of what they have written but I just don't see it happening for them.  And now that John Banville writes crime novels in addition to the serious (and difficult to read) fiction that made him famous, he would be a fun choice.  It would be great to have Benjamin Black show up in Stockholm to accept the prize.

As far as names not being mentioned by Ladbrokes but still meriting consideration?  John le Carre would be a nice choice (I've only recently started to read him but I suspect many would recognize that he is a great writer who happens to write about espionage and is not just a writer of spy novels).  Mavis Gallant, the Canadian short story writer - I think she's worthy.  My 'I know it is crazy to even suggest it' choice would be Stan Lee.  His body of work is simply amazing and I suppose there are other writers of comics who write better dialogue but the fecundity of Lee's imagination trumps all in my view.  Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, the Hulk, X-Men, Daredevil, Thor, Iron Man and so many others.  Really, just Spider-Man alone should be enough.  I know he hasn't written everything these characters have done and that Jack Kirby probably has an equal share in many of them.  Still, to be a major creator of what (in another one of my crazy, best not said aloud theories) is our modern equivalent of the mythology of Greece and Rome, I think that deserves the Nobel.