STOCKHOLM — Can Xue, the Chinese avant-garde novelist whose experimental fiction has made her a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has emerged as the bookmakers’ favorite to win this year’s award, according to odds offered by the British betting company Ladbrokes. Can Xue is listed at 10/1, ahead of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami at 14/1. Australian writer Gerald Murnane and the American novelist Thomas Pynchon are among the other writers near the top of the market.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A coalition of Sri Lankan lawyers and activists will begin a public campaign next week against the government’s proposed counterterrorism law, saying the bill retains many of the powers that made the country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act notorious, according to M.A. Sumanthiran, a constitutional lawyer and the acting general secretary of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK). The Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill was published in the government gazette on Sept. 22

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A man was critically injured on Saturday night when he was struck by a train near his home in the Inuvil-Karaikal area of Jaffna, the police said. According to preliminary police information, the man was lying on the railway track and listening to music on headphones at the time. The train severed both of his legs and one arm. He was taken to the emergency treatment unit at Jaffna Teaching Hospital, where he remained in critical condition, according to the police. The Chun