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The Associated Press

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STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A surprising number of bettors correctly chose French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio to win the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature - leading the Nobel prize jury to suspect a leak.

The annual Nobel selection by the Swedish Academy is notoriously hard to guess, but the betting firm Ladbrokes received a large number of bets on Le Clezio in the days before Thursday's announcement.

The academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, says Friday he has a "strong suspicion that there has been a leak in the system."

Engdahl was in Paris over the weekend and read a Le Clezio book while getting ready to fly back to Sweden. But he doesn't think that triggered the speculation because he says he "camouflaged" the book.