Nobel Literature Prize 2025: Western Male Author Favoured, Say Experts

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, to be announced on Thursday, is widely predicted by experts to go to a Western male author, following South Korea’s Han Kang’s win last year, when she became the first Asian woman to receive the accolade.

Awarding the prize to a woman this year would make history, as it has never been awarded to a woman two years consecutively, and female laureates remain under-represented — only 18 out of 121 recipients since the prize was first awarded in 1901.

Leading Contenders

Literary critics in Stockholm have highlighted several possible candidates:

Murnane and Krasznahorkai are noted for having the lowest betting odds, alongside Amitav Ghosh, whose name gained traction only days before the announcement.

Gender and Representation

The Swedish Academy, responsible for awarding the prize, insists that gender, nationality, and language are not factors in its decision.

“Even if they say they don’t think in terms of representation, you can still look at the list of past laureates and see that it’s kind of ‘OK, this year was a European, now we can look a little further afield. And now we go back to Europe. Last year was a woman, let’s choose a man this year,'”
— Lina Kalmteg, Sveriges Radio culture critic

Since the #MeToo scandal of 2018, which shook the Academy, there has been a tendency to award more women, as an effort to correct past imbalances.

Insights from Literary Critics

Bjorn Wiman, culture editor at Dagens Nyheter, believes the winner will likely be a man from the Anglo-Saxon, German, or French-language world.

Christian Kracht, 58, a German-language postmodernist, is seen as a favourite. Wiman noted that Academy members were prominently attending his event at the Gothenburg Book Fair, a signal historically associated with potential laureates.

Australian author Gerald Murnane has also received attention:

• Born in 1939 in Melbourne, Murnane’s work, such as The Plains (1982), explores Australian landowners’ culture, with the New Yorker describing it as a “bizarre masterpiece”.
• Literary critic Josefin de Gregorio noted his reclusive nature: “He’s never left Australia… he doesn’t make himself very accessible.”

Other potential female laureates include Australian Aboriginal author Alexis Wright.

Additional Contenders

The last South American winner was Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, 2010), suggesting the region might be overdue for recognition.

Academy Patterns and Prize Speculation

• No public shortlist is released.
• Deliberations are sealed for 50 years, making predictions difficult.
• The Academy often recognises authors relatively unknown to the wider public, maintaining a tradition of elitist, artistic focus.

“Authors like Han Kang would have been unthinkable five or six years ago… She was only 53, while the Academy previously tended to honour older men,”
— Bjorn Wiman

Prize Details

• Announcement: Thursday at 1:00 pm local time (1100 GMT)
• Monetary Award: $1.2 million

This year’s announcement is eagerly anticipated as literary circles and the global book world await whether the Academy will continue its trend of gender correction or return to a more traditional pattern of recognising Western male authors.