{{Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is being touted by some literary insiders as the top candidate for this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature.}}
Ladbrokes, the British betting agency, temporarily suspended wagering on Ngugi on Thursday, leading a respected US website to suggest Ngũgĩ may be “one of the five finalists for the Nobel prize, if not the presumed winner.”
A Ladbrokes official told The Atlantic Wire, the website reporting the move, that the agency suspends betting only when “a sudden large bet or bets” has been made.
The Ladbrokes spokesman added that a sizable bet had apparently been made by “a Swedish customer.”
Atlantic Wire writer Alexander Nazaryan interpreted that disclosure as a “bombshell.”
It is the Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel prizes, “suggesting that someone with inside knowledge of its workings may have placed the bet. At the very least, it could imply that an insider knows that Ngũgĩ is a finalist,” Mr Nazaryan wrote
Ladbrokes later on Thursday allowed betting on Ngũgĩ to resume, with the odds of his winning the world’s foremost literary prize set at 50-1 — the same as prior to the suspension of the betting.
Among possible finalists
That may suggest the flurry of speculation about a Nobel Prize for a Kenyan amounts to “much ado about nothing,” suggested Michael Orthofer, a commentator at another website, The Literary Saloon.
Mr Orthofer had tipped Ngũgĩ to win the Nobel a couple of years ago, and wrote on Thursday that he believes the Kenyan novelist, playwright and essayist is among the five finalists for this year’s award.
The winner will be announced sometime next month.
The Swedish Academy does not set an exact date for conferring the prize, which last year carried an award of about $1 million.
Mr Nazaryan says “Ngũgĩ seems to fit the Swedish Academy’s bill in many respects, from his literary talents to his political engagement.”
If selected, he would be the next African male writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature after Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka who won it 1986.
Labrokes sets 40-1 odds for this year’s prize for three writers: UK’s Salman Rushdie, Canada’s Margaret Atwood, and Don DeLillo of the United States.
Chinese novelist Mo Yan won last year’s award.
{Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o seen here displaying one of his recent literary works Wizard of the Crow. Ngũgĩ is now being touted as the possible winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2013.}
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