Chinese avant-garde author Can Xue and Hungarian postmodern writer László Krasznahorkai are joint favourites to win the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, according to bookmakers Ladbrokes. Both authors have odds of 10/1, making them the frontrunners in a wide-open race.
Can Xue, 72, whose real name is Deng Xiaohua, is known for her experimental style and has published hundreds of novels, novellas and short stories. She was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel 'Love in the New Millennium'. If she wins, she would become the third Chinese-born Nobel laureate in literature, after Mo Yan (2012) and Gao Xingjian (2000).
Krasznahorkai, 71, is celebrated for his dystopian and melancholic novels, which have won numerous awards, including the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature and the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. Several of his works, such as 'Satantango' and 'The Melancholy of Resistance', have been adapted into films.
Japanese author Haruki Murakami is third in the betting with odds of 14/1, followed by a group of authors including Cristina Rivera Garza, Enrique Vila-Matas, Gerald Murnane, Mircea Cărtărescu and Thomas Pynchon, all at 16/1. Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie are among those with odds of 20/1.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday 9 October at noon BST. The winner will receive 11 million Swedish kronor (£870,000). Last year's prize was awarded to South Korean author Han Kang for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life'.
