Atwood and Murakami
among favourites for prize as academy tries to rebuild its reputation
Anne Carson, Maryse Condé and Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong’o have also been tipped. Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP
The Nobel prize in literature will be awarded
twice on Thursday, after the Swedish body that selects the laureates was
engulfed in a sexual assault scandal that forced it to postpone the 2018
ceremony.
Among the favourites are the author of The
Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, and the poet Anne Carson, both from Canada,
the novelist Maryse Condé, from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the
Japanese author Haruki Murakami and the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
The Swedish Academy,
founded in 1786, is thought likely to try to avoid any controversy as it seeks
to rebuild its reputation after the scandal exposed harassment, furious
infighting, conflicts of interest and a culture of secrecy among its 18
members, who are elected for life and seen as the country’s guardians of
culture.
The poet Katarina
Frostenson was among seven academy members who left the body after bitter rows
over how to handle rape accusations made in 2017 against her husband, Frenchman
Jean-Claude Arnault, who was also accused of leaking the names of several prize
winners.
The couple ran a
cultural club in Stockholm that was part-funded by the academy, and several of
the assaults committed by Arnault – who is now serving a prison sentence for
rape – took place in academy-owned properties.
The academy has
since made changes that it says will improve transparency, including allowing
members to voluntarily resign, which they could not previously do. It has also
pledged to review its lifetime membership policy and appointed five members to
its selection committee from outside the body.
Seven new members
have been appointed and a respected literature professor, Mats Malm, took over
as permanent secretary in June after the resignation of his predecessor, Sara
Danius.
The Nobel
Foundation, which funds the literary world’s most prestigious prize, said the
academy still needed to do more. “I think they can – and to some extent they
have already begun doing so – act more openly than they have done in the past
and I think that would be a good thing,” said Lars Heikensten, the executive
director of the Nobel Foundation, who in May gave the academy the green light
to crown a laureate in 2019.
“Our reputation is
everything,” Heikensten said. “Obviously it is important to avoid this kind of
situation we have been in and of course it cannot be repeated.”
A Swedish literary critic, Madeleine Levy,
told Agence-France Presse: “The Nobel prize is for many now associated with
#MeToo … and a dysfunctional organisation.”
It seems almost certain that at least one of
the laureates will be a woman. The Polish writers Olga Tokarczuk and Hanna
Krall, South Korea’s Han Kang, Joyce Carol Oates of the US and the Russian
novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya have all been mentioned as contenders. Only 14 of
the 114 laureates since 1901 have been women.
Another male writer thought to be in with a chance
is the Romanian novelist Mircea Cărtărescu.
Previous winners of the prize include Bob
Dylan (2016), Alice Munro (2013), Orhan Pamuk (2006), Toni Morrison (2003) and
Gabriel García Márquez (1982).
One academy member,
Anders Olsson, said the committee had looked for a more diverse shortlist this
year and tried to move away from a “male-oriented” and “Eurocentric perspective
of literature”.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/10/nobel-prize-for-literature-to-be-awarded-twice-after-sexual-assault-scandal
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