ON EVE OF 2005 NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE, NAMING LIKELY WINNER DIFFICULT TASK

Associated Press
Oct 12 2005

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A row over last year’s winner has done nothing
to stifle rampant speculation about who may win the 2005 Nobel Prize
in literature.

On Wednesday, the day before the planned announcement, a bevy of names
— some familiar and others less so — emerged as likely candidates for
the prestigious prize, although trying to guess the secretive 18-member
Swedish Academy’s choice is, at times, an exercise in futility.

Still, Swedish media was buzzing with names like Syrian poet Ali Ahmad
Said, known as Adonis; Korean poet Ko Un; and perennial contenders
Margaret Atwood of Canada and Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol
Oates.

Respected daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter said other authors like
Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk, who faces prison after he was charged with
insulting Turkish identity for supporting Armenian claims that they
were the victims of genocide under the Ottoman Turks in 1915, could
be tapped.

“The first names that come to mind are Joyce Carol Oates and (Swedish
poet) Tomas Transtromer,” Uppsala University literature professor
Margaretha Fahlgren told Svenska Dagbladet, another Swedish daily.

Online betting Web site, Ladbrokes, also says the Czech Republic’s
Milan Kundera is a choice, with 12-1 odds, while Belgian poet Hugo
Claus, Italian poet Claudio Magris and Indonesian novelist Pramoedya
Ananta Toer each have 14-1 odds of winning.

Whatever the academy decides, it will likely have two immediate
consequences: increased book sales and controversy.

Last year’s winner, Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek, drew such
ire that a member of the academy publicly blasted his colleagues for
picking her.

Knut Ahnlund, 82, who has not played an active role in the academy
since 1996, resigned Tuesday after he wrote in a signed newspaper
article that picking Jelinek had caused “irreparable damage” to the
award’s reputation.

The prizes are handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder
Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. (AP)