The Nobel is awarded by the number of votes in the Swedish Academy, as everybody knows, but whoever wins has to be nominated first, by "members of academies, university professors, scientists from numerous countries, previous Nobel Laureates, members of parliamentary assemblies and others" (1). I did guess it with Orhan Pamuk a year before he won it, but it was more luck than anything else. Here are my picks.

a) The Academy would be inclined to pick a Latin American this time, because the last one was Octavio Paz, in 1990 (2). The two main choices are Mario Vargas Llosa, whose work really deserves to be recognized outside Latin America, and Carlos Fuentes, whose work was great, but has been lacking quality lately. Fuentes is a very good friend of Gabriel García Márquez and, since he is a Nobel Laureate and lives in Mexico part of the year because he read "La región más transparente" by Carlos Fuentes, I bet Fuentes has been nominated for several years AT LEAST by García Márquez.

b) If it's someone from the US, it would be Paul Auster, but that's just my personal, irrational choice, like was the case of Pamuk.

Now that think about it before breakfast... Auster will win the Nobel. Maybe not next year but he will. He must!

P. S. Perhaps the Academy picked Le Clézio, whose work I haven't read yet, to keep Latin Americans and French happy. He lived in Mexico for several years and wrote about it in half of his works (3, 4, 5).

Margaret Atwood, because everyone knows her work.

Or Njubalo Ndebele, because not enough people know his work yet.

Seriously, though, they are both great writers with major international reputations.