博彩公司最看好的候选人包括加拿大诗人安妮·卡森、中国实验作家残雪以及日本作家村上春树。残雪正在成为新的村上春树吗？这位日本文学巨星长期以来一直是诺贝尔奖的热门人选，却从未真正获奖，以至于文学界开始谈论所谓的“村上诅咒”。但中国实验作家残雪也开始呈现出类似的趋势。她曾在2018年、2019年、2023年、2024年和2025年成为博彩公司的头号热门，今年再次位居各大候选名单的首位。
Bookies’ favourites include Canadian poet Anne Carson, Chinese experimental writer Can Xue and Japanese writer Haruki Murakami Is Can Xue becoming the new Haruki Murakami? The Japanese literary superstar has for so long been a favourite to win a Nobel without actually winning one that people in the literature industry have started to talk of the “Murakami curse”. But Chinese experimental writer Can Xue too is starting to follow that pattern. A bookies’ top favourite in 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024 and 2025, she’s again topping runners and riders lists this year. Could the pre-announcement hype in itself count against her winning?
提前的炒作热潮本身会不会反而影响获奖几率呢？瑞典文学院显然深谙自身角色——它不愿被视为受外界因素左右而做出决定。去年的获奖者拉斯洛·克拉斯纳霍尔卡或许是立博博彩公司最看好的人选（与残雪并列），但博彩公司准确预测出获奖者的情况实属十年一遇的罕见现象。上一次出现这种情况是在2015年，当时斯韦特兰娜·阿列克谢耶维奇以3比1的赔率成为立博博彩公司的头号热门。
The Swedish Academy is clearly a self-aware kind of oracle, unhappy to see its choices as determined by outside forces. Last year’s laureate László Krasznahorkai may have been Ladbrokes’ favourite (alongside Can Xue), but bookies correctly predicting the winner is a once-in-a-decade occurrence. The last time it happened before that was with Svetlana Alexievich in 2015, Ladbrokes’ clear favourite at 3/1 odds. Yet while the Academy certainly likes being seen as unpredictable, that’s not to say that it actually is.
不过，虽然文学院确实乐于展现“不可预测”的形象，但这并不代表它真的如此。这个世界最负盛名的文学奖项显然一直在努力调整获奖者名单中的各种失衡现象。过去二十年里，它在性别方面做出了调整：自2017年起，获奖者名单中女性与男性人数交替出现，目前共有8位女性和12位男性获奖；在地域分布方面，西欧地区与其他地区的获奖者人数也各为10人。
The biggest literary accolade in the world is evidently engaged in a constant process of re-adjusting the perceived imbalances in its list of laureates. Over the last two decades it has done so in terms of gender, with eight women and 12 men, alternating since 2017, and in terms of crude geography, with 10 winners from western Europe and 10 from the rest of the world. After a Norwegian man in 2023, a South Korean woman in 2024 and a Hungarian man in 2025, we might reasonably expect a non-European woman in 2026.
继2023年的挪威男性、2024年的韩国女性以及2025年的匈牙利男性之后，我们大可以合理预期2026年的获奖者会是一位非欧洲地区的女性。正因如此，残雪与安妮·卡森的获奖赔率颇高，同时也有传言称澳大利亚回忆录作家兼小说家亚历克西斯·赖特以及安提瓜裔美国小说家兼园艺作家贾马伊卡·金凯德也有可能获奖。不过“非欧洲地区的女性”这一范畴依然过于宽泛，因此关注诺贝尔奖的人士也在探讨其他规律。
Hence strong odds for Can Xue and Anne Carson, and rumours about Australian memoirist and novelist Alexis Wright and Antiguan-American novelist and gardening writer Jamaica Kincaid. But non-European female is still a very broad category, which is why Nobel-watchers have been considering other patterns. The last Nobel literature laureate known foremost for their poetry was Louise Glück in 2020.
最近一位以诗歌创作著称而获诺奖的作家是2020年的路易丝·格吕克，再往前则是2011年的瑞典诗人托马斯·特朗斯特罗默。如今正是另一位诗歌作家获奖的良机，也正因如此，本周在法兰克福书展上，南非诗人马琳·范·尼克尔克的名字频频被提及。不过，关键衡量标准难道不是文学形式而是作品的普及度吗？最近两位真正具备大众号召力的获奖者——即那些并非传统意义上的“诺奖级”作家——分别是2016年的鲍勃·迪伦与2017年的石黑一雄。
Before that, it was Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer in 2011. High time for another writer of verse, which is why one name bandied about at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week was that of South African poet Marlene van Niekerk. But what if the crucial metric is not literary form but accessibility? The last winners with a genuine populist appeal – writers who didn’t a Nobel – were Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro, in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
“从某种程度上来说，继克拉斯纳霍尔卡伊之后，今年评委会或许会倾向于选择一位知名度更高、更易被大众接受的作家，这也在情理之中，”瑞典主流报纸《瑞典日报》本周如此写道。曾准确预测韩江将获得2024年诺贝尔文学奖的《快报》评论员延斯·利耶斯特兰德也持类似观点，并提出了一个颇具趣味的预测：那就是《半轮黄日》这部大获成功的作品的作者、尼日利亚作家奇玛曼达·恩戈齐·阿迪奇。
“In a way, it would be logical if this year they wanted someone who was a little more well-known and accessible after Krasznahorkai”, wrote Swedish broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet this week. Jens Liljestrand, a critic for Expressen who predicted Han Kang’s win in 2024, has followed that line of thought and come up with an intriguing prediction: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian author of the phenomenally successful Half of a Yellow Sun.
按照这一逻辑推断，诺贝尔文学奖评委会过去十年或许一直在玩一场“双重误导”的游戏，最终目的其实是为了把奖项颁给村上春树。
By that logic, of course, the Academy might have spent the last decade playing one big game of double bluff and working towards handing the prize to Haruki Murakami after all.