In a break with tradition, the Swedish Academy has announced that it will reveal the winner of this year's Nobel prize for literature on Thursday, giving us all four whole days for our speculations to reach fever pitch.
The bookies' favourite this year at 5-2 is Orhan Pamuk, whose trial for "insulting Turkishness" was dropped earlier this year after protests from the international community.
But after last year's surprise win for Harold Pinter, all we can be sure of is that the Academy will relish wrong-footing us all once more.
The buzz on the blogs is mostly around the usual suspects - Syrian poet Adonis (5-1), Korean poet Ko Un (10-1) and Israeli novelist Amos Oz (14-1) - but the list starts to get really interesting somewhere around 20-1. Mario Vargas Llosa seems like great value for a punt at 33-1, but is there anyone out there who'll take Thomas Pynchon (20-1)? How about a fiver on Bob Dylan at 50-1?
