Nobel Prize to be announced on October 8

Speculation for possible 2009 literature winners include authors Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates. French author Jean-Marie le Clezio won last year's prize.

The 2009 winner of the Nobel Literature Prize will be announced on October 8, the Swedish Academy has confirmed.

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The announcement will be a first by new permanent secretary Peter Englund, who earlier this year succeeded Horace Engdahl.

French author Jean-Marie le Clezio won last year's prize.

The Swedish Academy's announcement fills in the remaining blank in the Nobel week calendar - as other institutions that award prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and peace as well as economics had earlier confirmed their dates.

Speculation for possible 2009 literature winners include US authors Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates.

Amos Oz of Israel tops bookmaker Ladbrokes list of writers and poets with the odds 5 to 1. He is shadowed by Algerian-born Assia Djebar of France and Oates, both at 6 to 1. Others at the top of the Ladbrokes list were perennials including Syrian-born poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar) and Pynchon. The list included Italians Antonio Tabucchi and Claudio Magris, and Haruki Murakami of Japan.

The physics prize is due October 6 and the chemistry prize October 7. The peace prize is set to be announced October 9 in Oslo, Norway. Each prize, worth 10 million kronor ($1.4 million), is 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 October 12. The award ceremonies are held December 10 in Stockholm and Oslo, the anniversary of Nobel's 1896 death in San Remo, Italy.