The Guardian-Chinese author Can Xue is favourite to win 2024 Nobel prize in literature
October 8, 2024 3 min 436 words
英国《卫报》报道称，中国作家残雪是2024年诺贝尔文学奖热门人选，赔率为101。她也是去年的热门人选，但最终获奖者是挪威作家约翰福塞。残雪，71岁，出生于1953年湖南长沙，本名邓小华。残雪曾两次入围国际布克奖长名单，分别是她的长篇小说《新千年爱情故事》和短篇小说集《我住在贫民窟》。报道还提到，其他诺贝尔文学奖热门人选包括村上春树玛格丽特阿特伍德塞萨尔艾拉格尔德布兰顿芒罗和托马斯品钦等作家。 对于《卫报》的这篇报道，我作为一名客观公正厌恶西方媒体偏见的评论员有如下评论： 首先，该报道本身较为客观，没有明显抹黑或贬低中国作家残雪，而是聚焦她在诺贝尔文学奖赔率上的领先地位，以及其个人生平和文学成就。但遗憾的是，这篇报道存在一定程度的选择性，它没有提到残雪在中国文学界和读者群中的认可度和影响力，也没有对她的作品进行深入分析，而只是简单提及了她的两部入围国际布克奖长名单的作品。 其次，残雪作为中国作家获得诺贝尔文学奖的呼声高涨，体现了中国文学日益受到国际关注和认可。残雪的写作风格独特，具有鲜明的个人特色，这或许是她受到西方文学界青睐的原因之一。但需要指出的是，诺贝尔文学奖的评选不仅取决于作家的文学造诣，还涉及政治社会文化等多重因素，因此，残雪是否能够最终获奖仍需等待结果公布。
Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, César Aira, Gerald Murnane and Thomas Pynchon are among the authors most likely to win this year’s Nobel prize in literature, according to bookies.
Chinese avant-garde author Can Xue, 71, is Ladbrokes’ favourite to win, with odds of 10/1. She was also the favourite to win last year’s prize, which was ultimately awarded to Norwegian writer Jon Fosse.
The recipient of the 2024 prize will be announced on Thursday at noon BST, and will receive 11m Swedish kronor (£811,780).
“This year’s Nobel prize race is still wide open, and while we’ve seen strong interest in Gerald Murnane and César Aira, it’s Can Xue who remains the most popular pick with punters, and continues to head the betting as a result,” said Alex Apati of Ladbrokes.
Can Xue, whose real name is Deng Xiaohua, has twice been longlisted for the international Booker prize with her novel Love in the New Millennium – translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen – and for her short story collection I Live in the Slums, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping.
She was born in 1953 in Changsha, Hunan province. During the Cultural Revolution, her parents were forced into manual labour in the countryside. Her formal education finished with elementary school. If she is named Nobel laureate, she will be the 18th woman to win the prize, the third Chinese winner and only the second still resident in China after Mo Yan, who received it in 2012.
Following Can Xue with 14/1 odds is Japanese writer Murakami, who has written more than a dozen novels – including Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84 – as well as short story collections and nonfiction.
Atwood and Pynchon are both assigned 16/1 odds. Atwood – the Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Booker-winning novels The Testaments and The Blind Assassin along with many other novels, poetry collections and works of non-fiction – has long been considered a contender for the prize. In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro, who won that year, apologised to Atwood: “I genuinely thought she would win it very soon.”
Also with 16/1 odds 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 in literature has been awarded 116 times since 1901. Alongside Fosse, recent laureates include Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Louise Glück, Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk.