Nobel Prize Watch: Literary World Buzzes with Potential Contenders as Speculation Mounts
STOCKHOLM – As the Swedish Academy prepares to announce the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, a flurry of names is circulating within the literary community, fueled by commentary from publishers, editors, and fellow authors. Term magazine, a leading literary publication, has compiled a notable list of frequently mentioned contenders, offering a snapshot of the authors currently generating significant buzz.
The potential field is diverse, spanning continents and styles.American author margaret Atwood is consistently highlighted for her exploration of love, identity, and freedom “with bold feeling and existential sharpness,” and a literary universe tackling contemporary and future issues with ”linguistic precision, satirical power and a relentless look for power, gender and humanity’s vulnerability.”
Also drawing attention is Kerstin Ekman (Sweden),praised for her “masterful storytelling that weaves together nature,history and human life,” and her depiction of societal shifts with “psychological sharpness and linguistic wealth.”
Several other international authors are gaining traction. Fernanda Melchor (Mexico) is described as a writer channeling “a Joan Didion from the south of the border,” with prose that blends “violent reality” and “Mexican myth.” Michel Houellebecq (France) is lauded as “the sharpest, funniest and most sensitive European writing guys for the past 30 years.”
The list also includes Ta-Nehisi Coates (USA), recognized as a generation’s most influential cultural journalist, whose work, like Between Me and the World (2016) and We Had Power for Eight Years: An American Tragedy (2019), powerfully combines personal narrative and social criticism.
Discussion also centers on American author Donna tartt, with one commentator noting the prize should more often recognize writers “on top of their game,” despite a gap since her last novel. Hanya Yanagihara is also mentioned in this context, alongside the “incomprehensibly overlooked” Joan Didion.
Scandinavian literature remains in the conversation. While acknowledging the recent Nobel Prize awarded to South Korean author Han Kang in 2024, some voices within Sweden are advocating for recognition of their own. Karl Ove Knausgård (Norway) is a favorite of one Term contributor, though the author also expressed frustration with the recent Nobel awarded to compatriot Jon Fosse. Steve Sem-Sandberg (Sweden) is championed as “Largest Swedish authorship since PO Enquist.”
The Swedish Academy, entrusted by Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will to award the prize to the author who has produced “the most vital in the literature in the ideal direction,” has a history dating back to the first award in 1901. The coming weeks will undoubtedly see further debate and speculation as the literary world awaits the Academy’s decision.
