Your Betting Guide to the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced October 7 in Sweden. We've got your betting odds right here, fresh from international oddsmakers Ladbrokes. Now you can totally dominate your office Nobel Prize in Literature pool. (You have one, right?)

Yes, here are Ladbroke's top 20 contenders, including international supercelebrity authors like Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami and Philip Roth, and a few randos that you've probably never heard of.

Your Betting Guide to the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Complete Review notes that the list is anything but complete, and offers a bunch of other possible contenders, as well as this helpful tip:

it's exceedingly rare for any of the winners not to have been extensively translated into — in rough order of importance — French, German, English, and/or Swedish. They also tend to have picked up a lot of international prizes, often second-tier ones that don't get that much publicity (i.e. you've never heard of them).

Our money's on some random European that nobody in America has ever heard of, because the Nobel Prize Committee hates America. (Otherwise, why aren't we winning every year? Our authors are awesome!) Last year German novelist/poet Herta Muller won. More like who?-ta Muller. (Muller's chances were pegged at 1 in 50 last year.) [via The Millions]

[Image of Cormac McCarthy by Getty]