Sex abuse scandal’s latest casualty: the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature
World’s highest award for writing delayed due to fallout over member
STOCKHOLM — The Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious accolade for writing, will not be awarded this year, for the first time since 1949, as the fallout from a sexual abuse scandal that has battered the reputations of cultural gatekeepers continues to reverberate in literary and publishing circles around the globe.
The Swedish Academy, the 232-year-old panel of writers and scholars that confers the prize, announced on Friday that it would take the extraordinary step of postponing the 2018 award until next year, when it will name two winners — something it has not done since delaying the 1949 prize, bestowed on William Faulkner in 1950. The academy is involved only in the literature award, so other Nobel Prizes are not affected.
In November, a Swedish newspaper reported that 18 women said they had been sexually assaulted or harassed by Jean-Claude Arnault, a photographer and cultural impresario who is closely tied to the academy.
More women step forward
Arnault is married to a member of the academy, the poet Katarina Frostenson, and is a close friend to other members. The couple owns Forum, a well-known cultural center in Stockholm that received funding from the academy.
Accusers say that Arnault used his sway in the arts world, including his connections to the academy, to pressure young women into sex, and that some of his offenses took place at academy owned properties in Stockholm and Paris.
Accusations continue to emerge. One woman, artist Anna-Karin Bylund, says she complained about to the academy in 1996 that Arnault had assaulted her, only to be rebuffed. Another woman, novelist Gabriella Hakansson, says Arnault assaulted her in 2007. Just this week, it was reported that Arnault had groped Crown Princess Victoria, heir to Sweden’s throne.
Arnault has also been accused of leaking information about the academy’s deliberations and selections in past years.
The police have opened an investigation; through his lawyer, Arnault has denied any wrongdoing.
Sara Danius, the first woman to be chosen as the academy’s permanent secretary (essentially, its chief official), severed the group’s ties with Arnault and Forum, and commissioned an investigation by a law firm.
Even so, several members resigned in disgust, and last month, Danius was herself forced out from the top post, although she remains a member of the academy. Shortly after, Frostenson also stepped down.
“The crisis in the Swedish Academy has adversely affected the Nobel Prize,” Carl-Henrik Heldin, chairman of the Nobel Foundation, said in a statement early Friday. He said that while the award was intended to be awarded yearly, it should be postponed when the group choosing winners had a problem “so serious that a prize decision will not be perceived as credible.”
‘Wise decision’
Until Friday, the academy had insisted it was sticking to its usual schedule, winnowing potential laureates to a shortlist by summer and anointing a prize winner in October. “But confidence in the academy from the world around us has sunk drastically in the past half year,” the acting permanent secretary, literary scholar Anders Olsson, told Swedish Radio on Friday, “and that is the decisive reason that we are postponing the prize.”
Another member, the historian Peter Englund, wrote in an email: “I think this was a wise decision, considering both the inner turmoil of the Academy and the subsequent bloodletting of people and competence, and the general standing of the prize. Who would really care to accept this award under the current circumstances?”