New Delhi: Salman Rushdie, Mumbai-born author of Booker prize-winning ‘Midnight’s Children,’ is tipped among the bookmakers as the favourites in the UK to win this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. The author is recovering after being stabbed in New York in August, according to news agency PTI.
‘The Guardian’ newspaper analysed the betting odds to find that the lowest odds for Rushdie winning were 13/2 on Tuesday afternoon.
If the 75-year-old celebrated British American novelist wins, he will become the first Indian-born writer to win the prestigious honour since Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel for ‘Gitanjali’ in 1913.
The prize worth 10 million Swedish krona, conferred by the Nobel committee on the “person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, is to be announced on Thursday.
Rushdie’s prolific body of literary works includes the controversial ‘The Satanic Verses’, which led to a fatwa from the former supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini.
The attack on New York-based Rushdie on August 12 came 33 years after the religious edict calling on Muslims to assassinate the author over the allegedly ‘blasphemous’ novel.
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