Jury fears literature name leaked

STOCKHOLM - A surprising number of bettors correctly chose French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio to win the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature, leading the award jury to suspect a leak.

The annual literature prize selection by the Swedish Academy is notoriously hard to guess, but the betting firm Ladbrokes received a large number of bets on Le Clezio in the days before Thursday's announcement.

"I have a strong suspicion that there has been a leak in the system this time," Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy said yesterday.

Ladbrokes saw such a surge in speculation on Le Clezio leading up to the announcement that it decided to halt betting on Wednesday.

"The odds went from 15-to-1 to below 2-to-1. That's when we decided to close," said Lasse Dilschman, head of Ladbrokes' Nordic division.

Engdahl was in Paris the weekend before the announcement, and read the last few pages of a Le Clezio book as he traveled to the airport to fly back to Sweden. But he doesn't think that is what triggered the speculation because he camouflaged his copy.