Who thinks Japanese writer Haruki Murakami will win the Nobel Prize in literature? British bettors do.

British betting house Ladbrokes has Murakami as this year’s favorite for the Nobel Prize in literature. The author of such books as “1Q84,” “Norwegian Wood,” “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and next year’s “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” is frequently thought of as a top contender. In 2012, the Guardian called him the frontrunner, but he lost out to Chinese author Mo Yan, who was a new name in Ladbrokes’ list that year.

Plenty of other authors have fair shots at the prize, with contenders such as second-place Joyce Carol Oates (6-1), third place Peter Nadas from Hungary (7-1), South Korean poet Ko Un (10-1) in fourth, and Canadian short story writer Alice Munro (12-1) in fifth.

Bubbling under are more usual names bandied about for the Nobel: Philip Roth (16-1) in eighth place, Thomas Pynchon (20-1) in 10th, Cormac McCarthy (40 -1) at 13th, and Margaret Atwood (40-1) in 17th. The list continues on down to 100-1 shots including Jonathan Franzen to Junot Diaz to Marilynne Robinson.


The world will find out whether Ladbrokes is correct in October, when the Swedish Academy awards the Nobel Prize for literature. Since 1901, there have been 109 winners of the Nobel prize for literature, 12 of them women. The last American to win was Toni Morrison in 1993, and despite being listed as a literature contender with 10-1 odds in 2011, Bob Dylan has never won the prize.

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Haruki Murakami’s latest novel to be published in the U.S. in 2014