No Nobel prize for literature in 2018? scandal threat looms over Nobel prize
For the first time since 1943, there’s a notable risk that no Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded this year.
The painful, though not unprecedented possibility arises from sex abuse and financial crimes scandals involving the Swedish Academy, the body that chooses the Nobel literature winner.The committee discussed the prospect of postponing the award last week “and came to no decision,” member Per Wastberg told The Guardian after the meeting last week.
He added that members would resume the conversation at another meeting this Thursday, at which point they will very likely reach a decision on whether it will be necessary to skip the prize this year and instead announce two winners in 2019. The Swedish Academy’s internal feud was triggered by a sex-abuse scandal linked to Jean-Claude Arnault, a major cultural figure in Sweden who is also the husband of poet Katarina Frostenson, an academy member. Another member, former Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl, downplayed the possibility to The Guardian — but the committee’s public statement last week made little secret of the “state of crisis” it is currently experiencing.
“Confidence in the Academy has been undermined, the number of active members is diminished, and there has been an unplanned change in the post of Permanent Secretary,” the group acknowledged.If the academy does go ahead and choose a winner for 2018, some experts say the laureate’s accomplishments could be tainted or overshadowed by a mess they had no hand in creating.
No Nobel prizes at all were awarded during the World War II years of 1940-42. The Nobel literature prize was not given out on seven occasions so far: 1914, 1918, 1935 and 1940-43.
