Nobel prize in literature 2023 – live | Books

Last year, French writer Annie Ernaux was named laureate. To find out more about the author of A Man’s Place and Happening, read Sinéad Gleeson’s guide to her work here:

How it works

Ella Creamer

The new Nobel laureate in literature will be announced today, but getting to this point is a lengthy process.

First, the Nobel committee sends out invitations to hundreds of people qualified to nominate writers, including:

• Members of the Swedish Academy and of other academies, institutions and societies which are similar to it in construction and purpose

• Professors of literature and of linguistics at universities and university colleges

• Previous Nobel prize laureates in literature

• Presidents of those societies of authors that are representative of the literary production in their respective countries.

Details of the nominees cannot be revealed until 50 years later. The nominations are reviewed by the committee, which selects 15-20 names for consideration by the Swedish Academy, the 18-member body responsible for selecting the laureates.

The committee whittles the list down to five names, and the Academy takes a couple of months reading through the works of the finalists. In September, the Academy confers and by the beginning of October the winner is chosen. A candidate must receive more than half the votes cast.

Philip Oltermann

If there is one thing European newspapers can agree on during “the most unpredictable day of the literary year” (Le Point), it is that guessing the winner of the Nobel prize in literature is a fool’s game.

“Over the last 10 years, the Stockholm jury has cultivated a reputation for unpredictability”, wrote German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, noting that over the past 10 years, the prize had been awarded to five men and five women, from Europe, America and Africa.

If there was any consistent pattern at all, wrote Leipziger Volkszeitung, “it’s that it’s always the same ones who don’t get it”, nodding to Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami and Thomas Pynchon.

Most European commentators agree it will be another continent’s turn this year, after Europeans scooped six of the last 10 prizes. But some countries have got their hopes up nonetheless.

Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse is a strong bookie’s favourite again this year, causing some wry amusement among Swedish commentators: “In Norway they seem to be ready with the champagne every year”, wrote Aftonbladet newspaper, in a wry dig at its wealthy Nordic neighbour. Asked about this year’s likely winner in Swedish newspaper Expressen, critic Agri Ismaïl proposed that Australian novelist Gerald Murnane would be “a worthy choice but still not too obvious like, for example, Jon Fosse would be.”

Hungarian writers László Krasznahorkai and Péter Nádas are perennial Nobel contenders. With the former, a novelist and screenwriter, given 14/1 odds by Ladbrokes, some Hungarian commentators have dared to hope. “Literature Nobel within reach for the Hungarian master of the apocalypse”, wrote Hungary Today.

Bence Sárközy, director of publishing house Libri, has tried to calm the waves, arguing that the bookies’ lists were “mostly pure speculation, since this has no significance when the Nobel prize in literature is awarded”. “The most important thing we know is that we know nothing”, he told website Index.

Krasznahorkai commented on the speculation around his name in his own cryptic way. On Wednesday, the 69-year-old posted a link to a song from the Hungarian rock opera István, a Király on his Facebook page. The name of the song? Te Kit Száltanál, “Who would you choose?”

Ella Creamer

Who is Can Xue, the bookies’ favourite to win?

Ladbrokes has 70-year-old Chinese author Can Xue leading the pack with 8/1 odds of a win. Can Xue is a pseudonym that in Chinese means “residual snow” – a phrase that the writer said is used to describe both “the dirty snow that refuses to melt” and “the purest snow at the top of a high mountain”. The writer’s real name is Deng Xiaohua, and she was born in 1953 in Changsha a city in the Hunan Province. During the Cultural Revolution, her parents were condemned as rightists by the Communist party and forced into manual labour in the countryside. She only graduated from elementary school and is largely self-taught.

Can Xue writes experimental short stories and novels. She has twice been longlisted for the International Booker prize, first for her novel Love in the New Millennium (translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen) and then for her short story collection I Live in the Slums (translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping). If she takes home the Nobel today, she will be the 18th woman to win the prize and the second Chinese resident, after Mo Yan was honoured in 2012.

Lucy Knight

Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Nobel prize in literature, which should be awarded to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, according to the will of Alfred Nobel.

This year’s winner will be announced at 12pm BST (1pm CEST). Could it be Chinese avant garde author Can Xue, who is bookmaker Ladbrokes’ favourite, with 8/1 odds of winning? Or might it go to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Margaret Atwood or Haruki Murakami – all names that come up in conversations about the Nobel every year?

Join my colleagues Ella Creamer, Philip Oltermann and me for the next hour or so as we post updates, trivia and speculation about the 2023 prize.