Good morning, and welcome to our first-ever Nobel prize for literature liveblog. The prize is announced at 1pm in Sweden - that's 12 noon our time. You can watch a live webcast of the announcement here (and I strongly advise you to do so: sitting around watching a webcast of a pair of gilt doors constitutes my favourite moment of the literary year. The excitement when the doors finally open is quite out of proportion). We'll post the winner as soon his or her name is announced, and then round up reaction, extracts and whatever else we can lay our hands on.
Odds can be a good indicator for the Nobel - in 2009, Herta Muller zoomed up the rankings on the morning of the announcement, and sure enough, yomped off with the prize. But as MA Orthofer points out over on the excellent Literary Saloon, "remember that at closing last year it was Cormac McCarthy that led the pack at 3:1 (with Murakami at 5:1)" - and Maria Vargas Llosa came from nowhere to win. It doesn't do to get carried away. What news so far? Well, the odds have shifted around again in the night. Dylan continues to lead the pack at 5:1 (inexplicably, in my view - but there's a good discussion going on on yesterday's blog about his candidacy as to why he would in fact be a deserving winner). Hot on his heels is Algerian-born Académie Française member Assia Djebar, who is currently tying for second place in with Haruki Murakami, both at 6:1.
Journalists hate the Nobel because it's such an unknown quantity: there's no shortlist, so no way of knowing whether you're going to be confronted with a winner about whom you know very little (I refer you to the now-infamous Year of Jelinek, about which the less said, the better). But what's nerve-racking for us may well be conversely entertaining for you, on the other side of the computer screen. Either way, it certainly adds some spice to the proceedings.
Here's a full list of the winners of the prize to date, and let's while away the minutes until the announcement with some idle speculation. For the record, my money's on Adonis - but I've never guessed one right yet, so I beg of you, don't take me word for it .
