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by Otosirieze Obi-Young

It has been a tradition, since the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, for literary people to wonder when it should be Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s turn. And this year, the perennial favourite is, once again, a favourite. And the twist of 2019—the Swedish Academy’s announcement that it will be giving out two Prizes to make up for the postponement last year due to a sexual scandal—means that Ngugi, who received the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize in May, does stand his best chance ever.

Earlier today, Monday, 7 October, the Nobel Prizes season officially began with the announcement of the prize in medicine, which will be followed by the prizes for physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, peace on Friday, and economics on Monday. The British betting site Nicer Odds currently has Ngugi in joint fourth, down one place from last week, with the Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson still first. Ahead of 10 October, here are the odds.

Here’s an earlier breakdown by Literary Hub when Ngugi was joint-third, before Olga Tokarczuk came up from joint-seventh:

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Anne Carson 4/1 Maryse Condé 5/1 ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW Can Xue 8/1 Haruki Murakami 8/1 Lyudmila Ulitskaya 8/1 Ngugi Wa Thiong’o 8/1 Margaret Atwood 10/1 Marilynne Robinson 10/1 Olga Tokarczuk 10/1 Péter Nádas 10/1 Adunis 14/1 Gerald Murnane 14/1 Mircea Cartarescu 14/1 Ya Hua 14/1 Ismail Kadaré 17/1 Javier Marías 20/1 Jon Fosse 20/1 László Krasznahorkai 20/1 Milan Kundera 20/1 Peter Handke 20/1 Yoko Tawada 20/1 César Aira 25/1 Yang Lian 25/1 Ko Un 33/1 Ernesto Cardenal 50/1 George R. R. Martin 250/1

Five Africans have won the Nobel Prize in Literature: Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka in 1986, Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer in 1991, South Africa’s J.M. Coetzee in 2003, and Zimbabwe’s Doris Lessing in 2007. Ngugi has said that winning the prize as “would be validating but not essential.”