Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced in the next week, and it will be exciting to see who receives it. In Sweden, the general feeling towards the literature prize seems to be that the winner is usually someone who isn’t so well known and that the Swedish Academy tries to make some sort of statement with their choice each year. For example, for the past couple of years, many people have thought than an Arab author would be chosen, with the Syrian poet Adonis mentioned frequently as a strong candidate. Whether all that’s true or not, I know I personally find the announcements and ceremonies fun to watch, and I enjoy reading and seeing interviews with current and past winners in all the categories.

For translators, the literature prize is especially interesting. The winner of the literature prize naturally gets a lot of publicity and a larger audience, and this almost always requires translations of his or her work. If the author writes in a less common language or has a very distinct style, publishing companies have to scramble to find translators as soon as the announcement is made.

So are there any guesses about who will win this year?