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Another writer being tipped as a front-runner is Haruki Murakami.

Part of the joy of picking up a Murakami book is sinking into a world of established motifs, readers have said.

Murakami tropes are so well known they even inspired a bingo cartoon, published in the New York Times' Sunday Book Review in 2014.

Murakami bingo includes an "ear fetish", a "mysterious woman" or "faceless villain", "urban ennui", "Tokyo at night" and various supernatural spookiness and things vanishing.

"I think Murakami's worlds sit so well with many people across the world because he is beyond culture in a way," said Gitte Marianne Hansen, a reader in Japanese Studies at Newcastle University.

The reader title in UK institutions typically refer to an academic rank between a senior lecturer and a professor.

In April, throngs of fans joined late-night queues outside bookstores across Japan eager to lay their hands on his new novel - his first in six years.

Read more here

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She's a Chinese author that few in China are familiar with, but that could soon change if she walks away with this year's Nobel prize in literature.

It was one of the most turbulent periods of the 20th Century - one that Can Xue is well familiar with.

One of eight children, she was born just several years before China's Cultural Revolution, which plunged the country into nearly a decade of chaos and bloodshed.

When the hardline Communist revolution occurred, her father - an editorial director at a newspaper - was sentenced to the countryside and forced into manual labour. Her mother, who worked for the same publication, was forced to do the same.

As a result, she was unable to continue her education, graduating only from elementary school. It was not until she was almost 30 that Can Xue began to write again.

Read more here

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The nominations are shrouded in secrecy and there is no public shortlist.

However, Salman Rushdie, Can Xue and Jon Fosse are among the bookies’ favourites.

Salman Rushdie is best known for his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. The book, which some Muslims have decried as blasphemous, was banned in several countries within months of its publication and ignited protests at bookstores around the world.

He was stabbed on stage at a literary festival in New York last year, but survived.

Chinese avant garde author Can Xue was previously nominated for the international Booker prize for her novel Love in the New Millennium.

And Norwegian writer and dramatist Jon Fosse, whose work has been seen across the world in over 900 productions.

Other writers considered to be in with a chance include Ludmila Ulitskaya, Haruki Murakami, László Krasznahorkai, Gerald Murnane and Ismail Kadaré.

Ian Youngs
Entertainment and Arts Reporter, BBC News

The Nobel Prize in Literature is notoriously difficult to predict. Although some names are tipped more often, there are at least a couple of dozen authors who could realistically win.

The judges start with a list of about 220 names, then narrow that down to about 20, before eventually reaching a shortlist of five. None of those lists are made public, though, so we don't know who the nominees are.

The winners can come from any country - the past 10 years have seen two winners each from the US and France, and others from Tanzania, Belarus, Austria, Poland, the UK and Canada.

Those are mainly from Europe and North America - so maybe it's time for a winner from Asia or South America?

But I won't put money on it.

The winner is due to be announced at noon BST at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

We will bring you the news here as soon as we hear.

This year’s winner will receive a not inconsiderable 11 million Swedish kronor (£822,000; $996,000).

That is an increase from 10 million kronor last year.

First things first - an explanation.

The Nobel prizes, awarded since 1901, recognise achievement in literature, science, peace and latterly economics.

The literature prize is awarded to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, according to the 1895 will of Swedish businessman and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

Last year, it was won by French writer Annie Ernaux, for what the panel said was an "uncompromising" 50-year body of work exploring "a life marked by great disparities regarding gender, language and class".

Read more about her win here.

Paul Gribben
Live reporter

Hello and welcome to our coverage as we build up to finding out - at 12:00 BST - who will win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Spoiler alert: there is no shortlist and it is a prize that is notoriously difficult to predict.

That said, we will do our very best to bring you up to speed on the writers who we think may be among the front-runners.