There are American Philip Los, Algerian writer Assia Djebar, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, Albanian Ismail Kadaré, Somali writer Nuruddin Farah, British writer Salman Rushdie, and Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o, South African writer Karel Schoeman, Israeli writer Amos Oz

The most competitive candidates for the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, apart from Mo Yan, who has become a fact, are undoubtedly Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.