This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature has been postponed after a sexual assault scandal at the Swedish Academy, organisers have announced.
The decision follows a scandal over sexual misconduct allegations that has seen a string of board members resign from the board of the Swedish Academy that awards it. The foundation said in a statement the intention was to award the 2018 prize next year, along with that year’s prize.
The interim permanent secretary of the academy, Anders Olsson, said in a statement: “The active members of the Swedish Academy are of course fully aware that the present crisis of confidence places high demands on a long-term and robust work for change.
“We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence in the Academy before the next laureate can be announced. This, out of respect for previous and future literature laureates, the Nobel Foundation and the general public.”
Last month, Sara Danius, the head of the academy that selects the winner of the Nobel prize for literature resigned amid the crisis over the body’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against the French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of academy member and poet Katarina Frostensonn.
Ms Danius said she had lost the confidence of the academy, but would not comment on whether a vote was held to remove her.
“It is the academy’s wish that I leave my post as permanent secretary,” said Ms Danius, a 56-year-old Swedish literature historian, and the first woman to hold the position. “I would have liked to have continued, but there are other things to do in life.”
Ms Frostenson also resigned.
After the allegations against Mr Arnault were made public in November, three members of the 18-strong jury that selects the literature laureate resigned in protest over the decision not to expel Ms Frostenson. Mr Arnault was also accused of leaking the names of seven former Nobel winners. He denies both claims.
Membership of the body, which was established in 1786 by Swedish king Gustav III, is intended to be for life, resulting in any resignations leaving an empty chair until the jury member’s death. Following the spate of recent resignations, the Swedish king Carl XVI Gustaf announced he would change the academy’s statutes, allowing new members to be appointed to replace resigning members.
With only 11 members currently sitting on the 18-person jury, the academy said on Friday that it would spend the year rebuilding its membership and overhaul its operative practices, including “modernis[ING]” its statutes, in particular the ability of members to resign. It also said that “routines will be tightened regarding conflict-of-interest issues and the management of information classified as secret”.
The Nobel prize for literature has not been awarded on six previous occasions since its launch in 1901, although previously never over a scandal: in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943. The prize was paused during the first and second world wars and was not awarded in 1935 for reasons never disclosed. According to the academy’s statutes: “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year.”
The reputation of the prize, which has been won by names from Samuel Beckett to Rabindranath Tagore, was also called into question in 2016 when the academy voted for the musician Bob Dylan as its Nobel laureate “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. – PA, Reuters, Guardian
