Here are the bookies’ odds for the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Literary gambling enthusiasts of the world, rejoice! Your chances of guessing the winner of the most prestigious prize in letters have, for one year only, doubled. Yes, as we all know by now, because of the Swedish Academy’s decision earlier last year—in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal that saw the husband of one academy member imprisoned for rape—to withhold the 2018 prize, laureates for both 2018 and 2019 will be announced together when the white smoke is released in Stockholm next week.
Though the Nobel Prize for Literature has long been notoriously difficult to predict—with the academy regularly crowning dark horses (shout-out to renaissance man Robert Zimmerman) at the expense of those waiting patiently by the phone in their rumpled tuxedos and homemade sashes (pour one out for Philip “maybe next year” Roth)—that has never stopped the bookmakers from compiling their yearly odds. According to reputable-sounding British website Nicer Odds, Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson is this year’s top seed, while the snowball’s chance position is occupied by everyone’s favorite deadline-ignorer, George R. R. Martin.
Will Milan Kundera’s unbearable wait finally be over? Will the Stockholm Concert Hall become a palace of dreams for Ismail Kadaré? Will Olga Tokarczuk drive her plow over the bones of her vanquished peers? We’ll find out on Thursday.
Anne Carson 4/1
Maryse Condé 5/1
Can Xue 8/1
Haruki Murakami 8/1
Lyudmila Ulitskaya 8/1
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o 8/1
Margaret Atwood 10/1
Marilynne Robinson 10/1
Olga Tokarczuk 10/1
Péter Nádas 10/1
Adunis 14/1
Gerald Murnane 14/1
Mircea Cartarescu 14/1
Ya Hua 14/1
Ismail Kadaré 17/1
Javier Marías 20/1
Jon Fosse 20/1
László Krasznahorkai 20/1
Milan Kundera 20/1
Peter Handke 20/1
Yoko Tawada 20/1
César Aira 25/1
Yang Lian 25/1
Ko Un 33/1
Ernesto Cardenal 50/1
George R. R. Martin 250/1
