No Nobel in literature amid sexual abuse scandal

STOCKHOLM — The Swedish panel that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature said Friday that it would take the extraordinary step of not naming a laureate this year — not because of a shortage of deserving writers, but because of the infighting and public outrage that have engulfed the group over a sexual abuse scandal.

The Swedish Academy said it would postpone the 2018 award until next year, when it will name two winners, making this the first year since World War II that the panel has decided not to bestow one of the world’s most revered cultural honors. The academy is involved only in the literature award, so other Nobel Prizes are not affected.

Though the prizes should be awarded annually, they can be postponed or skipped “when a situation in a prize-awarding institution arises that is so serious that a prize decision will not be perceived as credible,” Carl-Henrik Heldin, chairman of the Nobel Foundation, which governs all of the prizes, said in a statement posted online Friday. “The crisis in the Swedish Academy has adversely affected the Nobel Prize. Their decision underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the Nobel Prize.”

In November, a Swedish newspaper reported that 18 women said they had been sexually assaulted or harassed by Jean-Claude Arnault, who is closely tied to the Swedish Academy and is accused of using his stature in the arts world to try to coerce women into sex. Other allegations against him emerged later.

Through his lawyer, he has denied all of the allegations.

Arnault, a photographer, is married to a member of the academy, Katarina Frostenson; is a close friend to other members; and is co-owner, with Frostenson, of Forum, a cultural center in Stockholm that received funding from the academy. Some events were said to have occurred at academy-owned properties in Stockholm and Paris, and at least one woman’s complaints to the academy about Arnault more than 20 years ago were rebuffed.

The crisis escalated when the academy dismissed another member, Sara Danius, as its permanent secretary, the group’s chief official — the first woman to hold that post — though she remained part of the panel. She had severed the group’s ties with Arnault and Forum, and commissioned an investigation of the academy from a law firm.

Her demotion prompted mass protests by critics who said that a woman had suffered for the misdeeds of a man, and that Danius had been punished for trying to introduce openness and accountability to a group that preferred to close ranks.