Academy: Ample 'fame' for both Nobel literature laureates this year
dpa
STOCKHOLM (dpa)- The spokesman for the Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel Literature Prize, is confident the laureates due to be announced next week will be regarded on an equal footing.
"The prizes, and laureates, of 2018 and 2019 are equally esteemed, and we believe that the attention and fame will be ample for both laureates," academy spokesman Mats Malm said Wednesday in an email to dpa.
Malm is set to announce the 2018 and 2019 laureates on October 10.
The pronouncement of the 2018 winner was postponed after the academy was rocked by scandal.
The controversy included alleged breaches of conflict-of-interest rules and a sexual assault case involving the husband of one of its members, poet Katarina Frostenson. She left the academy this year. Her husband, Jean-Claude Arnault, was convicted on two counts of rape in December.
The academy has sought to regroup.
"We have been working intensely with consolidating the organization, clarifying processes and defining responsibilities," said Malm, professor of literary theory at Gothenburg University.
He was inducted in December, and took over as permanent secretary in June. The permanent secretary serves as the academy's spokesperson.
One outcome of the 2018 crisis was that rules from 1786 were revised, allowing members - who are elected for life - to leave the body.
Another was the decision to include a five-strong external committee to assist the academy "to secure a wider range of perspectives and competences," Malm noted.
The literature prize, first awarded 1901, is one of the prizes endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
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