The Nobel Foundation has announced that Nobel Prize winner in Literature will be revealed on Thursday, October 8, 1:00 p.m. CET. According to the betting site Ladbrokes, Israeli author Amos Oz has the best odds of winning--the 4 to 1 favorite. The long shots are William H. Gass and Paul Auster, both with 100 to 1 odds. Bob Dylan clocks in with 25 to 1 odds. Here's more from the Nobel Prize we...

In a controversial speech about his wartime presidency, American President and author Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. While Americans missed out on the Nobel Prize for Literature once again this year, at least one American author brought a Nobel Prize home. The NY Times quotes the speech: "I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your g...

From the Guardian: The Wole Soyinka is a pan-African prize for literature designed "to celebrate excellence in all its cerebral grace, its liberating qualities, the honour and recognition it brings to a myriad of people, of diverse cultures and languages" and to operate as "the African Nobel prize for literature". Indeed, it's named after the first sub-Saharan African to win the Nobel prize proper...

President Obama has finally accepted his Nobel Peace Prize, and it's a new day. Some have found the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision perplexing. Astounding. Enervating, even. But I see it as great news. In fact, I am very, very excited. Just think. Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize means that anyone, anywhere can accomplish anything. All he or she has to do is....think about it. ...

       There's a fascinating piece in the Sunday Times by Mike Wade on 'The strange world of the Nobel literature judges' with the (misleading) headline Why have we never heard of these Nobel authors?.        Essentially a profile of the chairman of the Nobel Prize Literature Committee Per Wästberg, I hig...

While I do not doubt the literary merits of Nobel prize of Literature winners, and the honor is awarded to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” Maybe it’s the ideal direction

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), which annually bestows Ig® Nobel Prizes to those in the scientific community “for achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK,” awarded its first Ig® Nobel for literature last night at its gala 19th First Annual Ig® Nobel Awards ceremony at Harvard's Sanders Theater. And the winner of the 2009 Ig® Nobel Award ...

A row broke out in Portugal on Monday after a Nobel Prize-winning author denounced the Bible as a "handbook of bad morals".

Roth, Murakami, Doctorow: we've placed our bets on the Nobel prize for literature, but who do you think will – or should – win tomorrow? The Nobel prize for literature is announced tomorrow lunchtime so it's time for the usual annual guessing game here on the Books desk, safe in the knowledge that we always, but always, get it wrong. Last year Lindesay Irvine posted a "lukewa...

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to a little know author, Herta Muller. Ms. Muller joins the ranks of Nobel laureates - most recently the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio last year and the Austrian playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 - whose work, at the time of their announcements, anyway, was little known and little translated here. Only 5 of Ms. Muller's so...