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LONDON (AP) — Rounding off this year's Nobel award season is the prize for literature on Thursday.
The Swedish Academy is announcing this year's winner a week later than usual because of scheduling issues but insists that it's nothing to do with any disagreements on the awarding panel.
Since 1901, when French poet Sully Prudhomme became the inaugural winner of the literature award, 112 individuals have become Nobel laureates.
If history is any guide, then there's a good chance that the successor to the 2015 laureate, Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich, will be known all-around the world.
The average age of the winning author is 65.
Rudyard Kipling, the British author who is perhaps best known for "The Jungle Book," is still the youngest recipient from 1907 when he was 41.
The 2007 winner, Doris Lessing, also British, is the oldest at 88. Lessing, whose work ranged from memoir to science fiction, is one of only 14 female laureates.
Whoever wins the honor — and it's likely to be one individual since the award has only been shared by two people on four occasions — receives 8 million Swedish kronor (about $930,000) as well as a cherished medal.
Only two individuals have declined the award. Boris Pasternak, who was best-known for the epic "Doctor Zhivago," refused the award in 1958 following pressure from authorities in the Soviet Union, while French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre rejected it in 1964 because of a long opposition to such honors.
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