We're down to the wire. The Academy has confirmed that the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced Thursday, and the speculation, oddly muted to date, has picked up a tad. Ladbrokes continues to show Haruki Murakami as frontrunner, now at 2:1, with Péter Nádas surging to 5:2 and William Trevor coming out of the turn at 8:1. Mo Yan and Alice Munro drop to 10:1. Unibet shows Murakami at 4:0 and Mo Yan at 4.5:0. I'll be at Frankfurt, where the puff of smoke from the Vatican chimney takes the form of scrawled notes in various public places and mad sprints to the winning publisher's stand, and will report from there. In the meantime: your thoughts?