For the second year in a row Haruki Murakami has upset the bookies and been passed over for the Nobel Prize in Literature. For his translator, Jay Rubin, it's an indication that the Japanese author is still a literary force to be reckoned with.
The Harvard professor emeritus referred to the idea that authors who receive the prize do not write great work afterwards, whether because of the pressures of being a laureate or because the Swedish Academy often hands the prize to writers late in their career.
"It can be a curse to a writer," Rubin said of the prize. "I am kind of hoping for him to hold them off for a few more years," he said in a phone interview from his home in Seattle.