Salman Rushdie emerges as a strong contender for 2022 Nobel Prize in literature

With just a few hours left for the announcement of this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, bookies are busy placing their money on a list of probable names that might win this year. Among the list of authors that may win, it seems writer Salman Rushdie is emerging as one of the strong contenders for the prize.

The India-born writer and free speech advocate has spent years in hiding after Iran's clerical rulers issued a fatwa over his 1988 controversial novel 'The Satanic Verses'.
More recently, Rushdie, now 75, was stabbed and seriously injured in August at a festival in New York. He is said to be recovering now.

Apart from Rushdie, other possible winners include some prominent names from the literary world including Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Japan's Haruki Murakami, Norway's Jon Fosse, Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid and France's Annie Ernaux.

Those who follow the awards closely would agree though that it is notorious for its unpredictability.

Last year's prize went to the Tanzanian-born, UK-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies.
Gurnah was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa, and the prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers. It is also male-dominated, with just 16 women among its 118 laureates.

The prizes to Gurnah in 2021 and US poet Louise Glck in 2020 helped the literature prize move on from years of controversy and scandal.

In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 literature award to Austria's Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.

A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

(With agency inputs)