Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o among the nominees, winner to be announced on Thursday

The 112th literature laureate would have to fulfill Alfred Nobel’s stipulation of producing “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”

With a world of authors to choose from, it has become increasingly difficult to predict the winner, though the favourite include KenyanNgugi wa Thiong’o, Belarusian author and journalist Svetlana Alexievich, Japanese novelistHaruki Murakami, Irish Booker winner John Banville, Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates.

Each year, around 600-700 individuals and organisations are invited to nominate potential candidates for the award. The list of around 200 is narrowed down by the Nobel Committee, with the shorter list then deliberated over by the Swedish Academy, a group of 18 writers and scholars.

A majority vote decides the winner.

“It is not difficult to find worthy candidates. There are many: the world is so big … The hard part is to select who will get it,” former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund writes on the Nobel site.

“I’ve never experienced a prize where everyone was in full agreement. If so, it would be really strange.” He said.

Thursday’s winner will join a line-up of international literary icons who range from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn to Albert Camus and Gabriel García Márquez, and, more recently, Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing.

Nigeria'sWole Soyinkawon the Nobel Prize for  Literature in 1986 and since then no Nigerian has ever been nominated.

Patrick Modiano, from France won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. This year's winner will be unveiled at 1pm local time in Stockholm, Sweden.

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