Antigua writer Jamaica Kincaid. American Joyce Carol Oates and Romanian Mircea Cartarescu, three of the main figures that the Filba Festival will have that starts next 16 October, sound like candidates to win the next Nobel Prize in Literature, on an informal list that also ranks with chances to the American Joan Didion or the Canadian poet Anne Carson, according to critics.

After an atypical edition in which he crowned two winners simultaneously - the Polish Olga Tokarczuk and the Austrian Peter Handke-, after the scandal unleashed in 2018 for allegations of abuse against a juror, the Nobel Foundation is heading for another out-of-the-ordinary delivery, in this case without the possibility of performing in person their traditional ceremony in Stockholm due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The rest of the variables and condiments that surround the famous award remain unchanged, like the usual dance of names that “they heat up” the ad preview, scheduled this time for next Thursday. There, in the game of speculation, Punta Jamaica Kincaid, Antigua and Barbuda writer known for exploring racism, colonialism and gender issues.

“If the Academy knows what suits you, will choose Jamaica Kincaid”, assured Bjorn Wiman, cultural editor of the largest Swedish newspaper, Today's News, who, also, in a dialogue with AFP, substantiated the reasons that increase the chances of the writer: “Kincaid and his positions on various political and moral issues are absolutely worth listening to today”.

Kincaid is an Antiguan writer and teacher whose work includes texts such as work “Autobiography of my mother”, “Mr. Potter”, “A little place” Y “My brother”. She is a professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University and received numerous accolades including the Guggenheim Prize., the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and the Prix Femina Étranger.

The writer will be one of the central figures that Filba will have, the literary festival that takes place in Buenos Aires and that this year due to the restrictions due to the pandemic will take place virtually between the 16 and the 24 October. In this context, will talk with the poet and storyteller Valeria Tentoni in an activity that will take place on Tuesday 20 to 20.

Wiman also said that the Swedish Academy could “dust off some old candidate” as the Hungarian Peter Nadas, the Albanian Ismael Kadare or the Romanian Mircea Cartarescu”.

Cartarescu, considered by literary critics the most important Romanian narrator of today and one of the most important theorists of postmodernism in that country, He will also be one of the central figures of the Filba, where she will talk to critic Lala Toutonian on Saturday 17 to 20.30.

For another Swedish stuntman like Madelaine Levy, literary criticism of the daily Svenska Dagbladet, The Nobel Prize could instead go to the American Joan Didion, author of memorable works such as “The year of magical thinking”, where she narrates the sadness for her husband's death- prominent writer John Gregory Dunne- just a week after their daughter, Quintana, go into a coma that would slowly cause his death.

Also for Levy, Canadian poet Anne Carson can be considered as a possible winner, Together with the “usual suspects” Ngugi wa Thiong’o de Kenia, French novelist Michel Houellebecq, American authors Joyce Carol Oates- y Marilynn Robinson, Israeli David Grossman and Canadian Margaret Atwood.

Oates, which is already a classic in the pools of the Nobel Prize for Literature, will be in charge of opening the Filba with a speech that will take place on Friday 16 October at 20.

The Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel Prize in recent years has given some surprises that make the direction that the winner's decision will take this year unpredictable. The choice of American rock legend Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize for 2016 it was a controversial choice, followed the following year by the emergence of a rape scandal near its members that tore the Academy apart, forcing her to postpone the award for 2018, for the first time in 70 years.