Nobel panel to announce 2021 prize for literature
CTV
The 2021 Nobel Prize for literature is being announced Thursday, an award that has in the past honored poets, novelists and even a songwriter, Bob Dylan.
The Swedish Academy will announce the recipient in Stockholm at about 1 p.m. (1100 GMT; 7 a.m. EDT). Winners are famously hard to predict. This year's favorites, according to British bookmakers, include Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o, French writer Annie Ernaux, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Canada's Margaret Atwood and Antiguan-American writer Jamaica Kincaid.
Last year's prize went to American poet Louise Gluck for what the judges described as her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."
Gluck was a popular choice after several years of controversy. In 2018 the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners. The awarding of the 2019 prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke caused protests because of his strong support for the Serbs during the 1990s Balkan wars.
The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over US$1.14 million). The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.
