October 8, 2024, 11:28am

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced this Thursday, October 10. Who will win? As ever, no one knows. But everyone likes to guess…and bet. And because money talks, the betting odds can tell you a lot. Or a little. Or, something, anyway!

To figure out where to put my (extremely metaphorical) money this year, I consulted Ladbrokes, the UK’s premiere (?) betting outlet, which offers an extensive list of favorites, including many old hats and a few new ones.

Can Xue tops the list for the second year in a row. Is this her year? (I wouldn’t be surprised—last year, I predicted that she would win in 2024.) Australian novelist Gerald Murnane is in second place. Is it his year? After all, last year he was third, and in second place was Jon Fosse, who won. So it only follows. Maybe, maybe. Murakami is hanging around as always; César Aira is in the mix; the Greek writer Ersi Sotiropoulos makes a surprise appearance. Margaret Atwood has rather come up in the world since last year, when her odds were 39/1. Robert Coover is on the list, though very sadly, now ineligible. J.K. Rowling is in the insult slot, which made me laugh.

Anyway, one of these writers (or possibly another person altogether) will win 11 million Swedish krona (almost a million US dollars). See the full Ladbrokes list below, and place your bets.

Here are the odds as of this writing:

Can Xue – 10/1
Gerald Murnane – 12/1
Haruki Murakami– 14/1
César Aira – 16/1
Ersi Sotiropoulos – 16/1
Margaret Atwood – 16/1
Thomas Pynchon – 16/1
Anne Carson  – 20/1
Bushra al-Maqtari – 20/1
Carl Frode Tiller – 20/1
Norbert Gstrein – 20/1
Pierre Michon – 20/1
Ali Ahmad Said Esber – 25/1
Dag Solstad – 25/1
Don DeLillo – 25/1
Ludmila Ulitskaja – 25/1
László Krasznahorkai  – 25/1
Mieko Kanai – 25/1
Mircea Cărtărescu – 25/1
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o – 25/1
Peter Nadas – 25/1
Salman Rushdie – 25/1
Karl Ove Knausgaard – 28/1
Leslie Marmon Silko – 28/1
Mia Couto – 28/1
Michel Houellebecq – 28/1
William T. Vollmann – 28/1
Alexis Wright – SUSP
Ananda Devi – 33/1
Andrey Kurkov – 33/1
António Lobo Antunes – 33/1
Colson Whitehead – 33/1
David Grossman – 33/1
Duong Thu Huong – 33/1
Edmund White – 33/1
Emmanuel Carrère – 33/1
Enrique Vila-Matas – 33/1
Garielle Lutz – 33/1
Hamid Ismailov – 33/1
Han Kang – 33/1
Homero Aridjis – 33/1
Hwang Sok-yong – 33/1
Hélène Cixous – 33/1
Ivan Klíma – 33/1
Jamaica Kincaid – 33/1
Joy Harjo – 33/1
Joyce Carol Oates – 33/1
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi – 33/1
Marie NDiaye – 33/1
Marilynne Robinson – 33/1
Martha Nussbaum – 33/1
Nuruddin Farah – 33/1
Robert Coover – 33/1
Robert Macfarlane – 33/1
Ryszard Krynicki – 33/1
Salim Barakat – 33/1
Scholastique Mukasonga – 33/1
Sebastian Barry – 33/1
Tahar Ben Jelloun – 33/1
Yan Lianke – 33/1
Amitav Ghosh – 40/1
Ivan Vladislavic – 40/1
Linton Kwesi Johnson – 40/1
Louise Erdrich – 40/1
Patricia Grace – 40/1
Paulina Chiziane – 40/1
Vladimir Sorokin – 40/1
Wendell Berry – 40/1
Xiaolu Guo – 40/1
Ali Smith – 50/1
Botho Strauss – 50/1
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – 50/1
Claudio Magris – 50/1
David Peace – 50/1
Ko Un – 50/1
Murray Bail – 50/1
Stephen King – 50/1
Yoko Tawada – 50/1
Yu Hua – 50/1
Zoe Wicomb – 50/1
J.K. Rowling – 66/1