On Thursday, the Swedish Academy will award the Nobel Prize in Literature. The new laureate will get a handsome medal, an invitation to deliver a lecture, and a nice chunk of change.
Ahead of the announcement, there is plenty of speculation about who deserves the award.
The New Yorker's Ian Crouch notes that, "for gamblers with a literary bent, it's a most exciting time of the year."
Ladbrokes, "one of the world's leading betting and gaming enterprises," has the odds. Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer has the best odds: 4/1. The worst? Bob Dylan (150/1).
"Could this be a big year for the hometown favorite?" Crouch asks. "Probably not."
Herta Muller, last year’s winner, was given 50/1 odds, while the 2008 winner, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, was 14/1 on that year’s board. The Nobel’s picks in literature are often quirky; Ladbrokes might get killed if more punters cared about such things.
What's your pick? (No betting required.)
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