Basically, Salman Rushdie should be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year when the door of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm opens again on Thursday at 1 p.m. and jury spokesman Mats Malm appears in front of the assembled international media. Even after the British writer recovered surprisingly quickly from the consequences of the attack in 2023, prominent voices began to advocate for him to be given the prize for political and literary reasons.
Here Rushdie’s enduring fight for freedom of expression, there his extensive, sometimes great work from “Midnight Children” to his most recent novel “Victory City”, which was published after the assassination attempt and was enthusiastically received throughout.
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature went to the Norwegian writer and playwright Jon Fosse.
Gurnah, luck, handke
The Swedish Academy, as it once again expressed with this decision, does not like to be dictated from outside who it should award. Just think of the Nobel Prizes in Literature in 2021 and 2020, since the Academy for the World Literary Public discovered Abdulrazak Gurnah and Louise Glück, and the 2019 Prize for Peter Handke, one of the most controversial in recent years.
In this respect, it is probably of no use to Salman Rushdie that he continued his festival in 2024 with a return to the reading stages and the equally great book about the attack, “Knife”. The only plus point for him may be that at Ladbrokes, the British betting provider, Rushdie is also on par with his Norwegian colleague Dag Solstad, the Romanian Mircea Catarescu and the American Don DeLillo with odds of 25: 1 this time.
Norbert Gstrein is also traded
Because even those who are at the top of Ladbrokes and are traded with the best odds, i.e. the least money for a stake, rarely if ever get the prize in the end (with the exception of Herta Müller in 2009, there was a leak). So, above all, you can easily make low-paying bets that Haruki Murakami won’t. The Japanese writer has been in the top three of bookmakers for many years, and for many years the Swedish Academy has found his work to be too light and perhaps not literary enough. For all the qualities it has.
18
members includes the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature
Ladbrokes lists Murakami in second place (other providers also have him high up), right after the Chinese writer Can Xue, who, like so many authors, has been highly regarded for years and was already favored by Susan Sontag as the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Xue, who was born Deng Xiaohua in Changsha in 1953 – her pseudonym means both melting dirty snow and pure mountain snow – is a more experimental writer.
Most recently, her novel “Schattenvolk” was published in German by Matthes & Seitz. Another novel of hers, “Love in the New Millennium”, was nominated for the International Literature Prize of the House of World Cultures in 2022.
Xue and Aira are published in German by Matthes & Seitz
Also like Xue and Murakami, a favorite for years, not to say decades: the Argentine writer César Aira. Its trademark: short novels that are sometimes enigmatic, sometimes philosophical and everyday, and always easy to read. Many of his books have also been published in German translation by Matthes & Seitz.
So Xue ahead of Murakami and Aira, whose choice you could easily live with? Or Margaret Atwood, Peter Nadas, Gerald Murnane or Anne Carson, all of them long-time favorites? Or the Austrian writer Norbert Gstrein, however he ended up on the Ladbrokes list? (In any case, the Austrian media are already excited).
As I said: The Swedish Academy has its own mind, or more precisely: eighteen minds, that’s how many members it has. In recent years she has been unpredictable. Except for 2022, when she chose Annie Ernaux. The French writer with her autofictional books was highly regarded for the first time in 2021, as if out of literary nowhere, and a year later she was awarded the prize. That in turn could speak for Salman Rushdie.