Nobel countdown: two days and counting (and betting ...)

       Yes, they've announced that the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday, 9 October, at 13:00 local time (noon GMT). So they've decided on a winner .....

        - I remind you that the betting-odds hardly represent any sort of real odds: this isn't like betting on the ponies, where you at least know who is on the track; they're close to all guesswork, some educated, much (Bob Dylan (and at 25/1 !) ...) not. But they do tend to give fairly good guidance as to who has a shot at this thing: I figure there's about an 80 per cent chance the winner is one of the five betting favorites. And with the clock ticking, the betting action seems to be heating up, too.
       At Ladbrokes Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (7/2) has edged past Murakami Haruki (9/2) again. Unibet and PaddyPower will aslo take your money -- and are worth keeping an eye on over the next two days.

        - There have been relatively few articles speculating on possible winners -- or rather: almost none that didn't just regurgitate the latest Ladbrokes odds. Among the few I've sen so far:

• Svenska Yle asked a few people Vem får Nobelpriset i litteratur ? and among the less frequently mentioned names to date were: Peter Stamm and Anne Carson
  
  
• There's a dpa piece in a number of German papers, Literatur-Promis tippen Nobelpreisträger, and among the 'promis' ('prominent' literary types) is The Tower-author Uwe Tellkamp, who, aside from ridiculously suggesting J.K.Rowling is a possibility names Mircea Cărtărescu, Nádas Péter, and Les Murray; while publisher and The Executor-author Michael Krüger suggests (alphabetically): Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Peter Handke, Philippe Jaccottet, Claudio Magris, Botho Strauss, and Adam Zagajewski -- and would love to see them honored all together

        - Sabine Audrerie snagged a Q & A with Horace Engdahl, who used to be the Swedish Academy point man re. the Nobel (the job Peter Englund now has -- and Englund isn't talking), in La Croix. Lots of interesting observations, including his complaint of pseudo-transgressive fiction -- fiction that presents itself as transgressive, but where what's meant to pass for transgression is: "fictive, stratégique" -- which he complains is often formed at European or American universitites (MFA programs ...) -- and contrasts with the authentically transgressive writing of much-complained-about Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek.
       Also interesting: his repeated concern about literature-as-consumer-good: "je suis inquiet pour le futur de la littérature à cause de cette omniprésence du marché".
       Not any real clues as to the possible winner -- though it surely suggests they're very open to someone like Ngũgĩ (as well as, one would imagine, local favorite Juan Goytisolo -- or the likes of Krasznahorkai László and Mikhail Shishkin). Definitely worth reading, in any case.

       Pro tip: yes, Ladbrokes et al. list her as 'Svetlana Aleksijevitj' -- that's how they translaiterate the name (Святлана Алексіевіч) in Swedish. But the Voices from Chernobyl-author is known (and published) in English as 'Svetlana Alexievich', and you might want to use that spelling if she emerges as the winner (or even if she doesn't ...).
       [cc Wall Street Journal; The Los Angeles Times.]