Thursday confirmed as date for Nobel Literature Prize

Oct 3, 2011, 8:49 GMT

Stockholm - The 2011 winner of the Nobel literature prize will be announced on Thursday, October 6, the Swedish Academy confirmed Monday.

The announcement rounded out the Nobel week calendar, as other institutions that award prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, peace and economics had earlier confirmed their dates.

Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru won last year's literature prize.

As has been common in recent years, speculation on possible 2011 winners include poets such as Syrian-born poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar) and South Korean poet Ko Un since poets have not been awarded since 1996.

Other tips have centred on US-based authors, where Toni Morrison was the latest winner from the United States in 1993. Among the top US authors mentioned in speculation were Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy.

The Nobel week announcements will begin on Monday with the medicine prize.

The physics prize will follow on Tuesday and the chemistry prize on Wednesday. The peace prize is set to be announced on October 7 in Oslo, Norway.

Each prize, worth 10 million kronor (1.4 million dollars), was endowed by Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel.

The economic sciences prize - a prize not endowed by Nobel and awarded since 1968 - is due to be announced on October 10.

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