Swedish Academy to announce Nobel Literature prize on Thursday
Posted on: Tuesday, 30 September 2003, 06:00 CDT
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- The Swedish Academy will reveal this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.
The 18 lifetime members of the 217-year-old Swedish Academy made the annual selection in deep secrecy at one of their weekly meetings. On Tuesday, the academy said the winner would be named at 1 p.m. (1100 GMT) on Thursday, keeping with the tradition of giving a two day notice for the announcement.
But the literary world was already seething with speculation.
Ylva Aaberg, of Sweden's Bromberg's publishing house, said she'd like to see South African J.M. Coetzee tapped for the honor, which includes a check of more than 10 million kronor (US$1.3 million).
``There has been speculation it would be him for years,'' said Aaberg.
Coetzee who won the Booker Prize in 1999 for his novel ``Disgrace,'' has been one of many acclaimed authors who are believed to be on the short list every year.
The academy has also been Eurocentric in its decisions, giving the award to Europeans the last eight years, Swedish news agency TT said. Since 1980, only three winners have come from Africa, three from South America, two from the United States and one from Asia. It's been 14 years since someone from the Middle East was given the nod, Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz.
Anna Tillgren of publisher Bonnier said she favored American Philip Roth, Inger Christensen of Denmark and fellow Swede Tomas Transtroemer as her choices.
``At any rate, it would be nice with a woman,'' she told The Associated Press, referring to Christensen. The last woman to win the prize was Polish poet Wislawa Syzmborska in 1996.
Last year's award went to Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, whose fiction drew on his experience as a teenager in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Nobel Prize for medicine will be announced Oct. 6, followed by the physics prize Oct. 7, and chemistry and economics Oct. 8. All will be announced in the capital, Stockholm.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Oct. 10 in Oslo, Norway.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards, left only vague guidance about the prize, saying in his will that it should go to those who ``shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind'' and ``who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.''
The prizes in literature, economics, chemistry, physics and medicine are presented in Stockholm on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented the same day in Oslo.
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On the Net:
http://www.nobel.se
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