In just a few days, the Nobel committee will announce the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature. Just like last year, they will join an elite group of writers from around the world, and a small selection of those writers who we have read, reviewed, and classified as members of Nobel FC: The only Fantasy Football team where the Fantasy is that these people would ever play.

I’ll try to read the author in question as soon as I can, and write their post by the beginning of November, but I wanted to take a moment for the second year in a row to consider who will be joining this august group.

How does the “draft” work

First a recap for those who somehow found this website but are unfamiliar with both “drafts” and “The Nobel Prize” (just how deep an internet rabbit hole have you gone down, my dudes and dudettes?)

In American professional sports there are annual “drafts” where teams select from a collection of players not yet in the league. Teams study and examine player abilities, debate the best choice, and then “draft” someone to become a part of their organization.

The Nobel Prize is a little like that. The “Team” in question is the Swedish Academy (of Literature). They collection of players not yet in the league is literally everyone on earth, who has yet to be awarded the Nobel, is living, and who wrote something. (Literally, they have awarded a prime minister for stirring speech writing, and a folk singer for his lyrics.)

That’s a big field, so they take in nominations from other Academies of Literature around the world, professors of universities, living laureates, and presidents of Authors’ guilds. That is still a very big field so they narrow it down to five finalists: study and examine the writers abilities, debate the best choice and then “award” someone the Prize.

This process has been a little controversial over the years. After all, why do the Swedes get the final vote? (Alfred Nobel said so) Does the fact that the Swedish Academy is mostly old, white, male, Europeans explain the fact that most of the laureates in history have been old, white, male Europeans? (Yes) Will they try to be more inclusive in the future? (Yes, though they kind of had to after a pretty ugly scandal).

So Who Could be “Drafted” This Year?

We don’t know the top 5 candidates, or even the top 100 candidates who got nominated, and we won’t for another 50 years (long after the internet, including this post becomes a time capsule for aliens). But we have a list of likely candidates from gamblers and prognosticators. (I’ll toss out 11 here)

Last year’s 11 now off the list:

Jon Fosse won last year’s award, making him only the fourth Norwegian to win (tell me there’s no bad blood between the nordics…I bet the Swedish academy is just bitter about having soggy krumkake). While Fosse won a place in history books (or at least an extra line on Wikipedia), I won two nonsense points. My goal is to hit 11 points with 5 points if I correctly predict either on the *will win* or should win; 2 points if they’re on either “honorable mentions” list, and 1 if they’re in my 11 top candidates).

None of my other candidates lost their eligibility due to the unfortunate state of being dead…but I have decided to drop Frenchman Pierre Michon as he has slipped behind other French writer Helene Cisoux and the French have already had a major cultural moment this year with the Olympics as well as a recent laureate, I’m putting both Michon and Cisoux towards the middle of the queue, just outside this list.

Leading Candidates:

The leading favorites are Can Xue, a Chinese author who frequently challenges the increasingly authoritarian establishment in Beijing. Her style has some parallels with other challenging stream of conscious writers like Elfriede Jelinek and John Fosse, and while the committee likes to hit similar styles she would offer a distinct cultural and linguistic perspective, especially given the absence of awards to Asia in the last 10 years. There’s also been a surge of popular sentiment around Syrian poet Adonis who is often on these lists, and would represent a first winner from the arab world since 1988, while also drawing attention the ongoing issues in Israel with both Palestine and Lebanon. Lyudmila Ulitskaya is another political context pick who was briefly atop the rankings this year given her position as a strident opponent of Vladmir Poo-head (sorry, that’s Alex’s name for him). But she has slipped as well, particularly as the unrest in Israel grows.

Returning Candidates:

Then there are the popular picks, like Haruki Murakami, who has a wide following in seemingly every country on earth. However, given that the Nobel likes writers who court a little political controversy, Murakami seems less likely than Xue. The same could be said of other popular writers from often awarded regions and languages like: American Thomas Pynchon, Global Indian/Brit/American Salman Rushdie, Canadian Anne Carson and Australian Gerald Murnane. The Academy has seemed to be breaking apart from its old habit of just cycling through the West’s biggest culture factories, but that doesn’t change the fact that these broadly appealing writers are perennially near the top of the betting odds and in wide circulation at the Swedish library.

If they wanted to award a Western literary heavyweight but NOT someone who writes in a frequently awarded language, then they could consider Romanian novelist Mircea Cartarescu. Caratescu just won the Dublin Literary award (which represents the biggest financial prize for one book rather than a series). But as there’s no real link between awards and the Nobels seem to see themselves as separate entities, it may not work. Since they went to this well with Fosse last year, I’d put this as the least likely candidate.

Beyond Europe and Asia, the oddsmakers and the pundits don’t have many options. Perennial contender Ngui wa Thiong’o of Kenya looks to represent Subsaharan Africa and at 84 may be running out of time, while Mexican poet Homero Aridjis is a widely appreciated poet from Latin America (an area of the world not awarded since 2010), odds makers have him running behind Argentine poet (Cesar Aira), but with a limit of 11 picks, and several pundits pointing out Aridjis popularity among committee members for the last few years, I opted to keep Aridjis on the list. Like Cartarescu he also is coming off a prize win for the Griffin Poetry Prize from Canada (though that was more about his translator George McWhirter than an award for himself).

Analysis: Who will it be? Who should it be?

In articles analysing a team’s draft-day decisions, writers look at two things. What they think the team leaders will do, and what the author themselves would do if they had a chance.

Having already read books by Murakami and Rushdie as well as selections from the other returners, I read a few well-recommended lines from my two new names (Adonis and Ulitskaya) and came with the following suggestions.

The Academy Will Pick

The Swedish Academy tends not to prioritize the best selling or most widely acclaimed author available, they prefer those who have something artistic to offer in their work and especially if they have something beyond the purely personal to uncover. At times that leads them to revel in awarding obscure writers, and in the last four years, awarding more diverse picks, with a significant increase in female laureates.

So I think they will pick: Can Xue. I only read very brief excerpts from her work…but even that seemed weird and obtuse. Critics claim her work is often plotless, but that’s not a negative in the hands of the Nobel Committee, in fact it makes a nice counterpoint to Jon Fosse’s more linear stream of conscious win from last year and an echo of Elfreide Jelinek. She’s got art, she’s got style, she’s got a point of view. She’s the favorite for a reason.

Honorable mentions: Gerald Murnane, Mircera Cartarescu

I Would Pick

If left up to me, I would try to award a writer from outside the common-sphere of Nobel winners (ie Western Europe/America and white men). A more diverse writer with a point of view that connects to the wider world would be the ideal for me. Artistry is something I think lies in the eye of the beholder, so better to be clear than artful in my eyes.

While I liked what I read from this year’s new comers, I don’t see enough reason to step away from my same pick last year: Homero Aridjis. Admittedly, I only looked at four of his poems, but he evokes a universality similar to Paz and Neruda, while also considering the broader scope of history and nature–which might suit the climate change conscious Academy/myself to boot.

Honorable Mentions: Ludmilia Ulitskaya, Salman Rushdie (I still think of him as an Indian writer despite his increasingly American identity)–BONUS: I’m going to keep pushing Louise Erdrich out of stubborn loyalty.

Who would you pick?

Leave a comment below, please, even alien overlords, comment with your pick.

UPDATE!

Next Time…I rush to judgement on whomever our winner isSouth Korean writer, and youngest Nobelist in 37 years…Han Kang

Nonsense Point total: 2/11

I was nowhere near Han Kang in all these names, so zero points to me…next year should see a massive drop in chances for Xue and Murakami though, so it’s going to be different for sure