Nobel prize for literature - as it happened

• Sarah Crown
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 October 2011 13.17 BST
• Article history


The latest Nobel laureate, Tomas Tranströmer, in his house in Stockholm on October 6, 2011.Photograph: Maja Suslin/AFP/Getty Images
11.22am: 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.
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.
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.
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 ...

11.38am: Looking around at what people are reporting, most are buzzing about Bob Dylan's streak up the odds, but there's a good Washington Post piece asking whether this is the year when the Nobel committee will turn its gaze east, towards Asian and Middle Eastern literature. South Korean poet Ko Un and Syria's Adonis have featured in the favourites list for years; both would be worthy winners, and there's a particular sense that to award the prize to a Syrian author in the year of Arab Spring would be timely.
The Post points to comments from Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, in which he said that the academy "has started to work actively to broaden its scope beyond Europe and the English-speaking world". You can listen to an interview Richard Lea did with him earlier this year, here.

11.47am: Just tuned in to the webcast, and I can exclusively report that we are currently looking at a room of people, milling around, waiting - much as we are - for something to happen. There's some up-tempo muzak, though, and several nice chandeliers.
11.48am: Woah! it looks as if the Nobel website has gazumped itself: go to the front of the Nobel prize for literature site, and they appear to have posted the name of the winner: Serbian author Dobrica Cosic.