Nobel Prize in literature: Bob Dylan, American singer, songwriter, wins for creating 'new poetic expressions'

US songwriter Bob Dylan on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize, the first songwriter to win the prestigious award and an announcement that surprised prize watchers. Dylan, 75, was honoured “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” the Swedish Academy said. [caption id=“attachment_3050058” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sketch of Bob Dylan. Facebook[/caption] Literary circles were abuzz with speculation ahead of Thursday’s Nobel Literature Prize announcement, with award watchers suggesting this year’s honours could go to a controversial writer such as Syrian-born poet Adonis. Adonis and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o were among the hotly-tipped names to take home this year’s Nobel Literature Prize. The pair topped critics’ lists of predictions and online betting sites to succeed last year’s winner, Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus. This year, the literature prize is the last of the six Nobels to be announced, following those for medicine, physics, chemistry, peace and economics. At the end of September, the Academy explained that “for calendar reasons” it would not announce its prizewinner during the same week as the other Nobels, as it usually does. “If you ask me, it’s absolutely not a ‘calendar’ issue,” Bjorn Wiman, cultural pages editor at Sweden’s main daily Dagens Nyheter, had said.“This is a sign there’s a disagreement in the process to select a winner.” With inputs from agencies