Photo: A screenshot from the Contemporary Chinese Writers Website Project undertaken by faculty and teaching staff in MIT's Global Studies and Languages Department

Chinese people are keeping their eyes on nominee Can Xue for the Nobel Prize in literature this year, which will be awarded on Thursday.  

Can Xue, real name Deng Xiaohua, was born in Central China's Hunan Province in 1953. She ranked number 4 on the guess nominees list on the British website Nicer Odds as of press time. 

Chinese internet users discussed actively on social media her chances compared to previous Chinese literature laureate Mo Yan, known for his "hallucinatory realism." 

Susan Sontag, US essayist, critic and cultural icon, once said, "If China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate, it is Can Xue." 

Can's books have been translated and published outside China. 

Frontier, published in the US in 2017, won attention and applause from the West, according to media reports. 

Other hot guesses include Canadian essayist Anne Carson, French (Guadeloupean) writer Maryse Conde, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, which has been made into a hit TV series. Chinese writer Yu Hua and poet Yang Lian are also on the guess list, according to Nicer Odds.