Come October, and it’s the month of The Nobel Prize! The Prizes are announced, ordinarily, in the first week. This time, though, much to the great disappointment of bibliophiles and literature lovers, there won’t be a Prize for Literature, which has been postponed to 2019: the last time it happened was almost seven decades ago when the 1949 Prize was conferred on William Faulkner in 1950.
What is unfortunate is not merely the delay, but reasons for this rare occurrence. November 2017 saw reports of sexual and other misconduct of Jean-Claude Arnault, a 71-year-old photographer married to Katarina Frostenson, member of the Swedish Academy. The duo had close ties for thirty years with the Academy, responsible for choosing Nobel laureates in Literature. Arnault was accused of sexual harassment by eighteen women as also leaking out information on Prize winners before the formal announcement. The first accusation against Arnault was made to the Academy in 1996 which did not take any action.
Arnault was also charged with misusing Academy properties in Paris and Stockholm. Arnault and Katarina owned the “Forum,” a cultural center in Stockholm that received funding from the Academy. In the wake of the #MeToo campaign, several members of the Academy resigned, leading to a crisis such that even King Carl XVI Gustaf expressed his concern. As Lars Heikensten, Executive Director of Nobel Foundation said:
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