Oct 6, 2006, 13:36 GMT
Stockholm - The Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel Literature Prize said Friday it was announce its choice for the 2006 laureate on Thursday, October 12.
The prize is worth 10 million kronor (1.37 million dollars).
There is speculation that this year's literature winner may be Turkish author Orhan Pamuk or Syrian-born poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar) - a perennial name in the literature prize speculations - as were US authors Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth.
Poets Inger Christensen of Denmark, Sweden's Tomas Transtromer and Korean Ko Un have also been mentioned.
The academy is, however, known for its surprise choices. The 2005 award went to British playwright Harold Pinter.
The academy also announced two new members in the 18-member assembly, due to take their seats December 20.
Poet and literature researcher Jesper Svenbro, and poet and playwright Kristina Lugn were elected by secret ballot to succeed the late Osten Sjostrand and Lars Gyllensten who passed away earlier this year.
Nobel prizes are also awarded for physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, and peace. They were endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
In honour of Nobel, the awards are presented on December 10, the anniversary of his death 1896 in San Remo, Italy.
The winners of the medicine, physics and chemistry prizes were announced earlier this week with five Americans sweeping the prestigious awards.
Chemistry prize winner Roger Kornberg was awarded for describing how information in the genes is copied and transferred to cells that produce proteins.
Andrew Fire and Craig Mello were awarded the medicine prize for their discovery of 'a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information,' while John Mather and George Smoot shared the physics prize for work that studied the infancy of the universe and the 'Big Bang' theory.
The economics prize, not one of the original prizes named in Nobel's will, is to be announced on October 9 and the peace prize is due on October 13 in Oslo, Norway.
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