His real name is Ali Ahmad Said Asbar and this 81-year-old Syrian poet, though currently No. 2 on Ladbroke鈥檚 list, is the most favored contender. As the story goes, the poet recited a poem for the then-president of Syria when he was just 17, and has been writing ever since. When publications rejected submissions under his name, he chose a pseudonym he still uses today: Adonis. Described as dense and playful, , 鈥渋f only Whitman had spent more time in airports,鈥� and his poetry seems to fuse, effortlessly, East and West. He is, , 鈥渁s apt to cite Jim Morrison as the Sufi mystics.鈥�
He鈥檚 a favorite for several reasons. For starters, he is a poet, a medium thought to be 鈥渦nderrepresented among Nobelists lately,鈥� according to. Secondly, he writes in Arabic, an underrepresented language (only one other Nobel winner wrote in Arabic, Naguib Mahfouz). Perhaps most important, his poetry and his outspokenness 鈥� the calls him 鈥渁n equal-opportunity critic, encouraging revolution while lamenting the death of Arabic culture鈥� 鈥� coincide perfectly with the turmoil of the Arab Spring.
The Nobel committee loves socially minded altruists and Adonis, who was once imprisoned for his membership in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and is now , may be their man.
