Can

Chinese avant-garde author Can Xue, 71, is Ladbrokes favorite to win, at odds of 10/1. She was also the favorite to win last year’s prize, which ultimately went to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.

The 2024 recipient will be announced at 12:00 BST on Thursday and will receive 11 million Swedish kronor (£811,780).

“This year’s Nobel Prize race is still open and although we have seen strong interest in Gerald Murnane and César Aira, Can is Alex Apati from Ladbrokes.

Can and Chen Zeping.

She was born in Changsha, Hunan Province in 1953. During the Cultural Revolution, her parents were forced to do manual labor in the countryside. She completed her formal education with primary school. If named a Nobel laureate, she would be the 18th woman to receive the prize, the third Chinese winner and only the second still living in China, after Mo Yan, who received it in 2012.

Behind Can

Atwood and Pynchon are each given odds of 16/1. Atwood – the Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale and the Booker-winning novels The Testaments and The Blind Assassin, among many other novels, poetry collections and non-fiction works – has long been considered a contender for the prize. In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro, who won that year, apologized to Atwood: “I really thought she was going to win it very soon.”

Also at odds of 16/1 are Aira, Murnane and Ersi Sotiropoulos. Other authors listed by Ladbrokes include Anne Carson (20/1), Don DeLillo (25/1), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (25/1), Salman Rushdie (25/1), Karl Ove Knausgård (28/1) and Han Kang (33/1).

The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded 116 times since 1901. In addition to Fosse, the most recent award winners include Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk.