- Bookies are turning a buck on the best guesses
- Bob Dylan has good odds but had them last year, too
- Canadian Alice Munro is a favorite in a poll of book critics
- The prize has historically gone to European men writing in English
(CNN) -- Don't bet on Bob Dylan to take the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, to be announced Thursday, but lots of people are doing just that.
Next to the Nobel Prize for peace, the award for literature lends itself to the most speculation. Bookies are turning a buck on book fans' best guess upon whom the Swedish Academy will bestow its literary laurels.
Betting on authors like race horses is not odd, because they are better known to a broader audience than the chemists, physicists and medical researchers, who received prizes this earlier this week. Their work is reviewed by critics in newspapers and magazines and is sold to the reading public.
(The peace prize, on Friday, has lent itself to a similar guessing game. The top pick at betting outfit Unibet is Coptic nun Maggie Gobran)
'F' student now Nobel prize winner 
Cell discovery earns Nobel Prize For literature, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, with odds of 6/4, tops the Ladbrokes list. Murakami's most recent novel, "1Q84," was a top seller about a woman who slips into an alternate reality.
Follow along with the announcement
A top American contender on the bookmaker's list is "Everyman" author Philip Roth with odds of 16/1, but he is topped by an unlikely countryman: singer/song writer Bob Dylan who the bookmaker gives 10/1 odds.
Another name close to the top is that of Canadian author Alice Munro, with 8/1 odds, leaving her tied for fourth place.
Cultural columnists in the Swedish press have created their own literary race, parlaying some of the same names.
The Svenska Dagbladet newspaper polled 10 book critics from around the world, asking them who they feel deserves the prize.
Munro was a favorite.
The newspaper also offered its take on the bookmakers' odds, panning the idea of Bob Dylan as too out-of-the-box even for the most out-of-the-box thinkers at the Royal Academy.
Swedish broadcaster SVT has speculated on a Murakami win.
The prize, awarded 104 times, has historically gone to European men, a quarter of them writing in English -- a language many educated Swedes are proficient in.
Is it time for another woman, as only 12 have received the prize since it was first awarded in 1901?
No American or Canadian has won the prize since 1993, when Toni Morrison was honored for her work conveying the African-American experience. Maybe it's finally time to honor the time-honored American author Roth, now 79, for conveying Jewish-American life with universal humor and ire?
Should a book penned in Japanese get the prize this year, the Dagbladet asked. Only two have gone to authors in that language.
Murakami and Dylan were also favorites among bookies last year, but Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer won the million-dollar prize.
The Academy does not divulge the nominees ahead of time.
The youngest recipient was Rudyard Kipling, the author of the "Jungle Book" who was 42 at the time. The oldest was Doris Lessing who was 88.
When the Royal Academy makes the announcement, the bookies may lose their money; the speculators their pride.
But for Roth, he will still be able to claim to have written The Great American Novel -- the title he gave his 1973 work of fiction.
