Ngugi wa Thiong'o tipped for 2014 Nobel prize in literature

[Bartleby]

A run of bets originating in Sweden has seen the odds plummet on Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the distinguished Kenyan author, winning the Nobel prize for literature next month. The chances of the recently-retired Philip Roth taking the Nobel have also fallen dramatically, according to betting firm Ladbrokes.

Ladbrokes said that odds on Ngugi being named winner of the world's most prestigious literary award, given out every October in Stockholm, had shortened from 33/1 to 10/1. "It's always worth following the Swedish money and at this stage the one they like is Ngugi wa Thiong'o," said spokesman for the betting firm Alex Donohue. Ngugi's books include Caitani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross), a novel written on toilet paper while he was imprisoned following the performance of his play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which was critical of the inequalities of Kenyan society. He had been a favourite to take the Nobel in 2010, but that year the prize went to Mario Vargas Llosa. Tomas Tranströmer, 2010's fourth favourite to win, went on to take the Nobel in 2011.

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Favourite this year, according to Ladbrokes' odds, is Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami at 5/1,with Ngugi in joint second place with Algerian novelist Assia Djebar. Roth, who recently announced his happy retirement from the world of novel writing, comes in at 16/1, as do the feted Czech writer Milan Kundera, and the Syrian poet, Adonis.

"Philip Roth appears to be this year's 'stalking horse' so far as odds have fallen from 50/1 to 16/1 and at present he is the worst result in the book for us," said Donohue. "Plenty of the bets for him have been placed in betting shops in the UK as opposed to on our website or via our mobile app which is usually where most literary betting business is done."

Roth published his final novel, Nemesis, in 2010. "I did what I did and it's done," he has said. "There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date."

Some fans continue to think Bob Dylan has a chance at winning the Nobel, which goes to "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction", and which is decided by the members of the Swedish Academy. "As ever, there are people who think it could be Bob Dylan's year, but we'll never know if they are simply hopeful fans. There are two bets for Bob, both at 50/1 from Swedish customers," said Donohue.

Ladbrokes opened its book on the 2014 Nobel prize for literature minutes after Alice Munro was announced as last year's winner, cited by judges as the "master of the contemporary short story". "We've been taking bets for this year from the day of the announcement last year," said Donohue.
The date of the prize's announcement has not yet been revealed, but it is usually in early to mid-October.

Fonte: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/03/ngugi-wa-thiong-o-tipped-nobel-prize-literature-2014
_______
Que as apostas comecem!
alguém ja tinha ouvido falar desse tio queniano?

 

[DiegoMP]

Abri o link já procurando pelo nome do Roth e do Murakami, o pessoal não larga o osso mesmo. E não, nunca tinha ouvido falar no nome desse queniano.

Pensando agora nos ganhadores anteriores, acho que a Munro foi um dos laureados em que o Nobel mais teve peso, falo isso considerando apenas o Brasil, é claro. Bastante impressionante a quantidade de obras dela que pipocou por aí no último ano.

 

[Ana Lovejoy]

milan kundera deu um salto do ano passado para cá, heim. entrou no top10 das apostas. engraçado que esse ngugi wa thiong'o também não era top10 no ano passado (estava colado com o kundera). aliás, não conheço o queniano mas tá aí algo que eu gosto dessa época de nobel: acabo conhecendo gente nova que muito provavelmente não conheceria porque meu interesse é quase sempre concentrado em literatura brasileira, inglesa e norte americana.

(só para deixar registrado, lista do ano passado:

Haruki Murakami 5/2
Alice Munro 4/1
Svetlana Alexievich 6/1
Joyce Carol Oates 8/1
Péter Nádas 8/1
Jon Fosse 9/1
Ko Un 10/1
Thomas Pynchon 12/1
Assia Djebar 12/1
Adonis 14/1
Amos Oz 16/1
Philip Roth 16/1
Ngugi wa Thiog’o 20/1
Umberto Eco 25/1
Milan Kundera 25/1
Javier Marías 33/1
William Trevor 33/1
Cormac McCarthy 40/1
Darcia Maraini 40/1
Nuruddin Farah 40/1
Salman Rushdie 40/1
Margaret Atwood 40/1
Don DeLillo 40/1
Eduardo Garriga 50/1
Leonard Nolens 50/1
John Banville 50/1
Bob Dylan 50/1
Cees Nooteboom 50/1
Les Murray 50/1
Ismail Kadare 50/1
Daniel Kahneman 66/1
Tom Stoppard 66/1
E.L. Doctorow 66/1
Peter Handke 66/1
Enrique Vila-Matas 66/1
Yves Bonnefoy 66/1
A.S. Byatt 100/1
Patrick Modiano 100/1
F. Sionil José 100/1
Ben Okri 100/1
William H. Gass 100/1
David Malouf 100/1
Ursula Le Guin 100/1
Sofi Oksanen 100/1
Colm Toibin 100/1
Karl Ove Knausgard 100/1
Ian McEwan 100/1
Shyam Selvadurai 100/1
Dai Sijie 100/1
Claudio Magris 100/1
Ferreira Gullar 100/1
Kazuo Ishiguro 100/1
Adam Zagajewski 100/1
Mia Couto 100/1
Mahasweta Devi 100/1
Juan Marse 100/1
Antonio Gamoneda 100/1
Gerald Murnane 100/1
Olga Tokarczuk 100/1
Anna Funder 100/1
Chang-Rae Lee 100/1
Shlomo Kalo 100/1
Per Petterson 100/1
Andrea Camilleri 100/1
Leila Aboulela 100/1
Maya Angelou 100/1
Herman Koch 100/1
Peter Carey 100/1
Edouard Maunick 100/1
Paula Fox 100/1
Louise Gluck 100/1
Bei Dao 100/1
Mircea Cartarescu 100/1
Antonio Lobo Antunes 100/1
Tim Winton 100/1
John Ashbery 100/1
Paul Auster 100/1
Marge Piercy 100/1
Kjell Askildsen 100/1
Leif G.W. Persson 100/1
ChangRae Lee 100/1
Hilary Mantel 100/1
Christian Jungersen 100/1
Merethe Lindstrom 100/1
Azar Nafisi 100/1
Marilynne Robinson 100/1
Richard Ford 100/1
Daniel Chavarria 100/1
Chimamanda Ngozi 100/1
Elias Khoury 100/1
Duong Thu Huong 100/1
Ernesto Cardenal 100/1
Gosta Agren 100/1
Edward P. Jones 100/1
Michel Tournier 100/1
Junot Diaz 100/1
Michael Ondaatje 100/1
Jhumpa Lahiri 100/1
Atiq Rahimi 100/1
Michael Frayn 100/1
Jeffrey Eugenides 100/1
Julian Barnes 100/1
Jonathan Franzen 100/1
A.B. Yehoshua 100/1
Anne Carson 100/1
Juan Goytisolo 100/1
Carol Ann Duffy 100/1
Peter Hoeg 100/1
Ulrich Holbein 100/1
Ghassan Zaqtan 100/1
Mary Gordon 100/1
Yevgeny Yevtushenko 100/1
Eeva Kilpi 100/1
Jonathan Littell 100/1
Jan Guillou 100/1
Vassilis Alexakis 100/1
Cesar Aira 100/1)

 

[Bartleby]

pessoalmente queria muito que o Pynchon ganhasse... Assim, nunca li nada dele, mas, sei lá, gosto do que se diz dele como escritor, gosto do nome dele, do peso do nome dele =p e tbm seria um empurrãozinho a mais para eu ler o Contra o dia, rsrs

 

[Ana Lovejoy]

pessoalmente queria muito que o Pynchon ganhasse... Assim, nunca li nada dele, mas, sei lá, gosto do que se diz dele como escritor, gosto do nome dele, do peso do nome dele =p e tbm seria um empurrãozinho a mais para eu ler o Contra o dia, rsrs

eu torço sempre pro mcewan sabendo que ele não tem a menor chance. e para que o murakami não ganhe e ele vire tipo o dicaprio do nobel heheheheeh

 

[Mavericco]

Acho que deveriam dar 7 Nobels seguidos pro Gullar pra gente esquecer um pouco a goleada. Só acho.

Mas enfim. Todos sabemos que, embora o Nobel busque premiar só escritores de grande talento, ele também segue outras passagens do testamento do Alfred Nobel, como aquela questão do the greatest benefit to mankind e o the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.

 

[Bartleby]

é amanhã

convertendo do horário de la, o tão aguardado nome desse ano deve sair por volta das nossas 8h da manhã. Vou dar uma escapulida da minha aula, ir pro hotspot da facul, e ficar atualizando o Google News até aparecer quem ganhou

daí torcer para conseguir ser o primeiro a postar aqui, hihihi

 

[Ana Lovejoy]

no site do nobel eles fazem transmissão ao vivo do anúncio. >> http://www.nobelprize.org/ tem uns três anos que acompanho por ali

edit: copiando e colando um comentário que fiz num post do mavericco no facebook hoje:

eu sei que as apostas raramente dizem algo, mas considerando a matéria com um dos jurados do nobel que saiu no guardian, estou achando que esse ano dá o murakami ou o Ngugi wa Thiong'o (copiei e colei merrrrmo). trecho da entrevista (http://www.theguardian.com/.../creative-writing-killing...): "Engdahl, who together with his fellow members of the 18-strong academy is preparing to select the winner of this year’s Nobel literature award, and announce the choice on Thursday, 9 October, said it was on “our western side that there is a problem, because when reading many writers from Asia and Africa, one finds a certain liberty again”.

“I hope the literary riches which we are seeing arise in Asia and Africa will not be lessened by the assimilation and the westernisation of these authors,” he added later in his interview with Sabine Audrerie."

 

[Bartleby]

li esse artigo tbm - pus uma busca do Google no app de feeds no meu cel, hehe - e pensei isso tbm, deve sair asia ou africa esse ano... E acho que se o Murakami ganhar mesmo, esses jornalistas todos devem ficar espantados, porque toda hora que o citam, dão pra trás dizendo que ele não tem tantas chances, que ele está ali nas apostas mais por ser um favorito dos leitores e tal...