The Nobel literature prize could go to a Western author this Thursday, experts predict, though bookies have several authors from Asia as top picks even after South Korea’s Han Kang last year became the first Asian woman to win.

Awarding the prize to another woman this year would make history: it has never gone to a woman two years in a row, and women are vastly under-represented among its laureates — just 18 out of 121 since it was first awarded in 1901.

But literary critics in Stockholm told AFP they therefore expect a Western man to get the nod this year, citing Australia’s Gerald Murnane, Romania’s Mircea Cartarescu, Hungary’s Laszlo Krasznahorkai and Peter Nadas as possibilities, as well as Swiss postmodernist Christian Kracht.

Murnane and Krasznahorkai meanwhile have the lowest odd

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