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It’s barely a month before the next Noble Laureate is announced, so excitement is starting to build up.

But for those who are placing bets on who will win, their excitement has been brewing for the past one year.

Every year, on the day after the Nobel Laureate is announced, a Swedish betting firm called Ladbrokes begins taking bets on who will win the prize the following year.

Clearly, the Nobel committee cares very little for what a bunch of rich gamblers have to say about who takes home the most prestigious prize in literature.

But Ladbroke has come to be seen as a measure for how much an author is favored to win the prize or not.

“It’s always worth following the Swedish money and at this stage the one they like is Ngugi wa Thiong’o,” said the spokesman for the betting firm Alex Donohue to Guardian UK.  Read full article

For the first time, the odds against Ngugi wa Thiongo has shortened considerably from 33/1 to 10/1 chance. Haruki Murakami, the Japanese author of IQ84, is one of his competitor with odds at 5/1.

Phillip Roth and Milan Kundera, typically hyped for the prize, seem to be falling slightly out of favor, placing them behind Ngugi at 16/1.

What does this all mean? Possibly nothing.

What we do know for sure is that it’s about time the prize came back to the continent. Ngugi is one the few living writers who changed the way we think about literature and its relationship to a life and practice of political activism. He’s earned it.

We are sending good vibes his way!

 

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Image: by Suzanne Ahrling via Malmö stadsbibliotek via Flickr