Nobel prize in literature 2022: French author Annie Ernaux announced as winner – live

It’s difficult to predict a winner for this year’s prize, given that there’s a 99.9% chance I’ll be wrong, but I’ll go ahead anyway and say that I think Margaret Atwood could be in with a chance.

My choice is pretty calculated: it’s unlikely that the academy will award two consecutive prizes to people from the same geographic region, and as last year’s prize was awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar, that unfortunately rules out a number of truly excellent African writers. (I’d like to be very wrong here.)

The last Canadian to win was Alice Munro in 2013, so there’s a long enough gap between wins for the award to go to another Canadian legend. Plus, Atwood is in her 80s, and if now is not the time to honour her, when is?

And lastly, Atwood produces work that speaks to our political, cultural and social times, but she’s not faddy, something the Swedish Academy would surely shy away from.

So that’s my prediction. Apologies to Atwood in advance, I’m definitely wrong.