1.   Last year, they caught prize-watchers off guard by announcing the literature winner on the last day in September.

2.   Literature prize winner Dario Fo also has managed to combine seriousness with humor, in plays that throw hilarious barbs at social injustice and political oppression.

3.   The academy usually names the literature winner on a Thursday in October.

4.   The choice in October of exiled author Gao Xingjian as the literature winner appeared only to confirm those suspicions, although Beijing has largely ignored discussing his selection.

5.   The date for the literature prize winner to be announced has not been publicly disclosed.

6.   The literature winner, Irish poet Seamus Heaney, was announced last Thursday.

7.   In her absence the prize was handed to Nobel literature prize winner and dissident Wole Soyinka.

8.   Like another Russian Nobel literature prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky was expelled from his own country after his writing drew the wrath of the communist authorities.