Nobel Prizes this week but no literature award

With the academy in shambles, a new group creates own award pending the Nobel’s return in 2019

In tatters after a #MeToo scandal, the Swedish Academy has postponed this year’s Nobel Literature Prize, leaving an empty page for 2018 as it attempts to reform the venerable institution.

The ‘Holy Grail’ of authors, poets and playwrights, the Nobel has gone to some of the greatest writers of all time, from Albert Camus to Samuel Beckett and Ernest Hemingway.

But the list of recipients also includes US rock icon Bob Dylan, the 2016 choice harshly criticised by some who lambasted the Academy for overlooking other critically-acclaimed authors.

After the Dylan controversy, the Academy attempted to smooth things over last year with an uncontroversial laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro, a British author of Japanese origin whose nomination enjoyed broad consensus.

#MeToo hurricane

But just three weeks after that announcement, the institution again found itself in controversy, this time in the eye of the #MeToo hurricane.

Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, married to an academy member, and the head of an influential cultural club in Stockholm, was accused of rape and sexual assault.

An internal academy probe also revealed conflicts of interest between him and the institution, which had funded his club for years.

Arnault ultimately faced trial on two counts of raping a woman in 2011.

His verdict is due on Monday, and the prosecution has sought a three-year sentence.

The academy has been deeply divided over how to deal with Arnault and on the reforms it needs to undertake.

Some of the 18 members, who are appointed for life, have refused to participate in the academy’s work over the row — including its first female permanent secretary Sara Danius — leaving it without a quorum.

Paralysed and ridiculed around the world, the scandal forced the academy’s hand: it announced in May that it would postpone by one year the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, a first in 70 years.

The 2018 Nobel Prizes will be announced this week.

With the academy in shambles and no literature prize to look forward to this year, a group of Swedish cultural figures decided to create their own award pending the Nobel’s return next year.

The “New Academy Prize in Literature” was devised as a protest to denounce “bias, arrogance and sexism”, and “remind people that literature and culture at large should promote democracy, transparency, empathy and respect, without privilege”, according to the founders. .

It will be announced on October 12.