CEvery year, it’s the same riddle: who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature? And, very often, it’s a surprise. This does not prevent bookmakers from announcing their predictions on their websites, sometimes with a certain flair: Jon Fosse, 2023 Nobel Prize winner, was ranked second in several lists last year, Annie Ernaux was in the top five in 2022, the year of his coronation. In anticipation of the proclamation of 2024, which will take place this Thursday, October 10, the reference site in the United Kingdom, Ladbrokes, gives as favorite the Chinese Can Xue (at 10 to 1), author whose influences are Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka.
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Let’s admit it straight away, we don’t know her well: only three of her novels have been translated into our language to date and she has not been published in France since 2001. Second foal, the Australian Gerald Murnane, also relatively unknown to the French public, who has so far only been able to read two of the author’s multiple books: Tamarisk Rowwritten in 1976 and translated by Buchet-Chastel in 2016, and The Plainsinitially published in 1982 and taken up by POL editions in 2011.
Splendor and misery of favorites
Change of atmosphere when arriving at number 3 on the list: it’s the essential Haruki Murakami. If his bestsellers (Kafka on the Shore, The Ballad of the Impossible, 1Q84…) are translated all over the world, each year, it is “caramba, failed again” for the Japanese writer, who nevertheless always appears in the top bookmakers. Will this year be a game changer? Suspense.
The other perennial favorites – and losers – are Margaret Atwood (with odds of 16 to 1), Thomas Pynchon (same odds), Anne Carson (20 to 1), who are among the first ten names on the list. Among the favorites we also come across the Argentine writer César Aira, the Greek Ersi Sotiropoulos or the Yemeni writer Bushra al-Maqtari, not yet translated into French.
What about our darling Frenchies? Pierre Michon is at 12e place, with odds of 20 to 1, Michel Houellebecq is in decline, with 28 to 1. As for the eternal favorites (and disappointed) that are Don DeLillo, Mircea Cartarescu, Salman Rushdie, William T. Vollmann and David Grossman, they are so low in the ranking that it is difficult to determine their positions.
The immense Joyce Carol Oates, if we always believe Ladbrokes, whose name is on everyone’s lips every year and who has just hit hard with her masterful new book, Boucherreceives the very poor odds of 33 to 1 and arrives at the back of the convoy. Will the Nobel jury make the bookmakers lie and the great JCO triumph? Answer tomorrow at midday.
