There are speculations that this time the Nobel Literature Prize will be awarded to someone from Africa or North America.

The coveted award is given by a Swedish Academy and it never discloses the names of the nominees before the award ceremony.

On Wednesday, Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet issued a list of the likely winners of the award, which included the names of American novelists Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy. The list also included the name of a Canadian short story writer, Alice Munro.

But writers from Africa are also strong contenders of the award. The favourites being Ngugi wa Thiong'o of Kenya and Nuruddin Farah of Somalia.

There is strong buzz that Algerian novelist and poet Assia Djebar may also win this year’s Nobel Prize. It is apposite to note that the poet hasn’t received the prize since Poland's Wislawa Szymborska in the year
1996.

On Thursday, the Literature Prize will be awarded to the winner at 1:00 pm, that is, 1100 GMT. This will be the fourth award session and is likely to be the most watched award function, after the announcement of the prizes for medicine, physics, and chemistry previously this week.

People are hoping that Wa Thiong'o will win the Nobel Prize, as he is a very good writer and is also a huge raconteur.