When the bookmakers and the book-writers are on the same page, it’s a safe bet that the Nobel Prize in Literature is about to be announced. So it is—and Ladbrokes, the venerable British gambling establishment, is giving odds on forty-six writers.
At the top of the list right this minute is Ngugi wa Thiong’o, with Haruki Murakami a tight second. (Update: In the end, the winner was Patrick Modiano, a long shot.) But the really sensational news about this year’s race, regardless of who wins, is the third-place candidate: Svetlana Alexievich.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that Alexievich was on the list; and it could have been a very small downy feather when the word came that she was among the frontrunners. Can you believe it? Alexievich? Don’t they know that she’s a reporter? Is it possible that the Nobel committee might finally reverse the ignoble treatment of what we call “nonfiction writing” and admit that it is literature?
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