Stockholm (AFP) - The Nobel Prize in Literature to be announced on Thursday has mainly gone to Western writers over the years, though this year the Swedish Academy may shine its spotlight further afield, experts say.

With no official shortlist, speculation is rife on who the 18-member Academy will settle on, the suspense ending when it announces its pick at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT).

Many believe Chinese author Can Xue – the favourite on several betting sites – will win.

Often likened to Franz Kafka, Can’s experimental style transforms the mundane into the surreal.

Australian novelist Gerald Murnane is also hotly tipped, while the name of another Australian, Aboriginal author Alexis Wright, emerged on Wednesday when British bookmakers Ladbrokes halted bets on her name due to suspicious activity, suggesting a possible leak.

The Academy is known for its penchant for bringing lesser-known authors to a wider audience.

“I think they’ve gone to great pains to find some writer that will catch the culture commentariat with their pants down,” Bjorn Wiman, culture editor at Sweden’s newspaper of record, Dagens Nyheter, told AFP.

That was the case in 2021 – when Zanzibar-born British author Abdulrazak Gurnah was chosen for his work exploring exile, colonialism and racism – and in 2016, when US folk rock icon Bob Dylan won.

Wiman said the prize could just as easily go to a Mexican or Argentine writer as an African author.

“I think it will be a woman from a language zone outside Europe,” he said.

- Eurocentric, male prize -

Wiman’s personal pick, however, would be British Indian-born author Salman Rushdie – a free speech icon who received death threats over his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses”, declared blasphemous by Iran’s supreme leader, and the victim of a 2022 stabbing in New York state that saw him lose his right eye.

A nod to Rushdie would correct what many see as a decades-old mistake made by the Swedish Academy.

Citing the “independence of literature”, it long refused to condemn the fatwa, or religious edict, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued calling on Muslims across the world to kill Rushdie.

Academy members were divided about whether to stand as neutral guarantors of the arts or as supporters of their fellow author, who was forced into hiding.

Three members angered by the Academy’s silence resigned and it was not until 2016 that the Academy finally condemned the fatwa.

But if the Academy were to award Rushdie, 77, it would certainly face a backlash for honouring yet another older man, Wiman noted.

Last year, the Nobel went to Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, then aged 64.

Other names making the rounds in Stockholm’s literary circles include Canadian poet Anne Carson, Hungary’s Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Romania’s Mircea Cartarescu, Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Haruki Murakami of Japan.

Argentina’s Cesar Aira, Canada’s Margaret Atwood, American novelist Thomas Pynchon, Greek writer Ersi Sotiropoulos and Somali author Nuruddin Farah have also been mentioned.

Since it was first awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been a Eurocentric, male affair.

Out of 120 laureates, only 17 have been women. But the Academy has made strides in that regard, crowning eight women in the past 20 years.

While 30 English-language authors and 16 French-language ones have won, there has only been one Arabic writer: Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz in 1988.

- Better linguistic spread? -

Likewise, while China’s “literature is very vast”, that diversity has not been reflected in the history of the Nobel, said Carin Franzen, literature professor at Stockholm University.

The last Chinese author to win was Mo Yan in 2012.

One explanation for this under-representation could be the judges’ lack of linguistic breadth, said Victor Malm, cultural editor at daily Expressen.

He predicted a win this year for Antiguan-American Jamaica Kincaid.

“I have a hard time believing that a Hindi author would suddenly be announced. No one in the Academy speaks Hindi, how could they have any credibility on the subject?” he said, noting they would have to rely on translated works.

The Academy has always consulted experts in its selection process, and – vowing better representation – expanded its efforts in 2021 to include language experts.

After a 2018 #MeToo scandal that left the Academy in tatters, the institution promised to broaden the prize, both geographically and linguistically.