Swedish Academy says it needs to ‘commit time to recovering public confidence’ after string of resignations and wide-ranging scandal

Riven by infighting and resignations following allegations of sexual misconduct, financial malpractice and repeated leaks, the Swedish Academy has said no Nobel prize for literature will be awarded this year.

For the first time since 1949, the secretive jury that hands out the world’s most prestigious literary prize will not unveil a winner this autumn, instead revealing two laureates in 2019, it announced on Friday.

“The present decision was arrived at in view of the currently diminished academy and the reduced public confidence in the academy,” the body, founded by King Gustav III in 1786 and still under royal patronage, said in a statement.

“We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence ... before the next laureate can be announced,” its interim permanent secretary Anders Olsson said. “This is out of respect for previous and future literature laureates, the Nobel Foundation and the general public.”

Nobel literature prize postponement attempts to retain some dignity Read more

At the root of the institution’s unprecedented crisis are a raft of wide-ranging allegations against Jean-Claude Arnault, a photographer and leading cultural figure in Sweden, who is married to Katarina Frostenson, an academy member and author.

Last November, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published detailed allegations by 18 women accusing Arnault of sexual harassment and physical abuse over a period of more than 20 years, in France and Sweden and including at properties owned by the academy.

For years, Arnault and Frostenson ran Forum, a club in Stockholm that showcased exhibitions, readings and performances by prominent cultural personalities including Nobel laureates. Now closed, the club was partly funded by the academy, prompting allegations of a conflict of interest.

As the escalating scandal unfolded, Dagens Nyheter also reported that an internal investigation by the academy had concluded that Arnault may have leaked the names of seven Nobel literature laureates – the subject of heavy betting – in advance, including those of Bob Dylan in 2016 and Harold Pinter in 2005.



The Franco-Swedish photographer’s lawyer, Björn Hurtig, has repeatedly said his client denies all the allegations against him, adding that Arnault has become “the victim of a witch hunt” and that the accusations “may have been made with the sole purpose of harming” him.

The hidebound and traditionally deeply patriarchal academy’s inability to respond adequately to the allegations against Arnault sparked a bitter internal feud, with members exchanging public insults in the pages of the Swedish media.



Three members of the 18-strong academy resigned last month in protest over a decision not to expel Frostenson, followed days later – amid protests that women were being made to carry the can for male misbehaviour – by the permanent secretary, Sara Danius, who had battled in vain to reform it, and by Frostenson herself.

Public fights, resignations and a sex scandal: what's going on with the Nobel prize? Read more

Technically, academy members are appointed for life and not permitted to resign, although they could choose to leave their chairs empty. But with the body now down to 10 active members – and 12 required to elect new ones – King Carl XVI Gustaf this week announced a change in its statutes to ensure its survival.

The decision to postpone the 2018 award was broadly welcomed. “I think it’s wise; this is the best decision they could make,” said Dagens Nyheter’s literature critic, Maria Schottenius. “They’ll have a chance to restore the institution this year and fill the empty seats, and come back with a strong academy that can award the prize.”

One academy member, Göran Malmqvist, told Sweden’s TT news agency that the body was in crisis and would take time to rebuild. But Jens Liljestrand of the Expressen newspaper told TT it was “a disaster for the Swedish Academy’s reputation … that they didn’t manage to handle this better”.

The Nobel Foundation, which administers the estate of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, said the crisis had “adversely affected” the literature prize and its judges. “Their decision underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the prize,” it said in statement.

Public prosecutors have said they are dropping parts of their probe against Arnault due to a lack of evidence, but the bulk of the investigation continues. Sweden’s economic crimes bureau last week said it was investigating a case linked to the academy, widely assumed to be the subsidies it paid to Arnault.

How the academy chooses the winner of the literature award has remained opaque for decades. Each February, academy members review around 200 nominations, coming up with a shortlist by May, and then reading up on the five authors still in the running for the prize over the summer.

The winner is the author deemed to best fulfil Alfred Nobel’s desire to reward “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

The honour has not been awarded at all on seven occasions since its launch in 1901, although previously never over a scandal. The prize was missed in 1914, 1918, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943, during the first and second world wars, and in 1935 for reasons never disclosed. It has also been “reserved” – due to a lack of suitable winners – in 1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936 and 1949.

The chairman of the Foundation, Carl-Henrik Heldin, said separately that the awarding of the 2018 Nobel prizes in other categories would not be affected. The Foundation now expected the academy to “put all its efforts” into restoring its credibility, Heldin said, calling on the remaining members to show “greater openness towards the outside world” in future.</s>File: No Nobel Prize for literature will be given this year.

STOCKHOLM - The Swedish Academy said on Friday it would postpone this year's Nobel Literature Prize for the first time in almost 70 years, as it is rocked by turmoil over links to a man accused of rape and sexual assault.

"The Swedish Academy intends to decide on and announce the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 in parallel with the naming of the 2019 laureate," it said.

The scandal centres on allegations by 18 women in November -- in the wake of the #MeToo campaign -- that they had been subject to sexual harassment and assault by Jean-Claude Arnault, the French husband of Academy member and poet Katarina Frostenson.</s>The Swedish Academy said Friday it would postpone this year's Nobel Literature Prize for the first time in almost 70 years, as it is rocked by turmoil over links to a man accused of rape and sexual assault.

[STOCKHOLM] The Swedish Academy said Friday it would postpone this year's Nobel Literature Prize for the first time in almost 70 years, as it is rocked by turmoil over links to a man accused of rape and sexual assault.

"The Swedish Academy intends to decide on and announce the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 in parallel with the naming of the 2019 laureate," it said.

The institution, founded in 1786, has on seven previous occasions chosen to reserve the prize: in 1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936 and 1949.

"On five of those occasions, the prize was delayed then awarded at the same time as the following year's prize," the Academy said in a statement.

The body has been plunged in crisis since November, in the wake of the global #MeToo campaign, when Swedish newspaper of reference Dagens Nyheter published the testimonies of 18 women claiming to have been raped, sexually assaulted or harassed by Jean-Claude Arnault, an influential figure on the Swedish culture scene.

Arnault, the French husband of Academy member and poet Katarina Frostenson, has denied the allegations.

The revelations have sowed discord among the Academy's 18 members about how to move forward, and in recent weeks, six of them have chosen to resign, including permanent secretary Sara Danius.

"The active members of the Swedish Academy are of course fully aware that the present crisis of confidence places high demands on a long-term and robust work for change," the Academy's interim permanent secretary Anders Olsson said in the statement.

"We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence in the Academy before the next laureate can be announced," he said.</s>The Swedish Academy, which organizes the Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Friday that it will not award the 2018 honor due to sex abuse allegations that have raised turmoil among the academy members and cast critical light upon the prestigious annual award.

"The present decision was arrived at in view of the currently diminished academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy," the academy's press release read.

The group's permanent secretary, Anders Olsson, said: "We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence in the academy before the next laureate can be announced."

Read more: How a #MeToo scandal is rocking the Nobel literature academy

He added that the cultural institution also made the decision to delay the 2018 award "out of respect for previous and future literature laureates, the Nobel Foundation and the general public."

The academy said it intended to bestow the 2018 literature award in 2019.

The Nobel Prize Foundation, which manages the assets for the row of Nobel Prizes, said it backed the decision to postpone this year's literature prize.

"The crisis in the Swedish Academy has adversely affected the Nobel Prize," Carl-Hendrik Heldin, president of the foundation's board, said in a statement.

The decision of the academy "underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the Nobel Prize. None of this impacts the awarding of the 2018 Nobel Prizes in other prize categories," he added.

However, Heldin underscored that the academy should now undertake all it can to recover its integrity in the aftermath of the sex scandal: "The Nobel Foundation presumes that the Swedish Academy will now put all its efforts into the task of restoring its credibility as a prize-awarding institution and that the Academy will report the concrete actions that are undertaken."

The Nobel Prize Foundation was created in 1900 to administer the will investor Alfred Nobel, which funds the prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. The institution's rules allow a prize to be postponed for a year.

Read more: The Nobel Prizes - what you need to know

The Swedish Academy's decision to delay the 2018 award and bestow it in 2019 — alongside that year's winner — came after the cultural and linguistic body had been engulfed by crisis at the end of last year following revelations of alleged rampant sex abuse perpetrated by a high-profile figure associated with the organization.

In November, a Swedish newspaper published testimonies of 18 women who claimed to have been raped, sexually assaulted or harassed by Jean-Claude Arnault, the French husband of academy member Katarina Frostenson and an influential voice on the Swedish cultural scene.

Arnault has also been accused of leaking the names of literature prize winners.

The revelations threw the academy into turmoil, causing several members of the 18-person group to disassociate themselves or resign, including Sara Danius, the first female head of the academy that was founded in 1786. Frostenson also stepped down.

While the academy has admitted that "unacceptable behavior in the form of unwanted intimacy" took place internally, the admission has not been enough to stem the fallout to the group's damaged reputation.

"The Academy needs time to regain its full complement, engage a larger number of active members and regain confidence in its work," the body said in its press release on Friday.

The academy has chosen the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature starting in 1901. Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro won the prize last year.

The Swedish Academy pointed out that this year is not the first time it has decided to delay the prize: the group declared a "reserved prize" in 1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936 and 1949, with five of those postponed prizes being awarded at the same time as the following year's prize.

Additionally, no Nobel prizes at all were awarded during the World War II years of 1940-42.</s>The Swedish Academy says the Nobel Prize in Literature will be not awarded this year following sex-abuse allegations and other issues within its ranks that have tarnished the body's reputation.

The Academy (which picks the winners every year) said on Friday, 4 May, that the 2018 prize will be given in 2019. The decision was made at a weekly meeting in Stockholm on the grounds that the Academy is in no shape to pick a winner after a string of sex abuse allegations and financial crimes scandals.

A statement said the decision "was arrived at in view of the currently diminished Academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy."

On 26 April 2018, the Academy members had convened to discuss if the Literature Nobel for 2018 should be scrapped in light of the ongoing controversies, and announced that a decision would be taken by 3 May.

Previously, the Nobel Prize in Literature was not handed out in 1914, 1918, 1935, and during the years 1940 to 1943.

The controversy first reared its head when 18 women spoke with a Swedish newspaper about being sexually harassed by photographer Jean-Claude Arnault. Arnault is married to Swedish Academy member and poet Katarina Frostenson.

The Academy had also subsidised for several years, a cultural club run by Arnault in Stockholm. There were further allegations that Arnault had leaked the names of Nobel Prize winners — the focus of intense betting — before the official announcement.

Several members called for Arnault's wife Katarina Frostenson to step down from the Academy after the accusations against her husband surfaced. She was later suspended.

In all, six of the 18 board members of the Academy had stepped down at the height of the crisis, including its secretary Sara Danius.</s>The Swedish Academy said on Friday they have decided not to award the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, following a sexual abuse scandal last year that implicated a member and her husband.

In November last year, newspaper Dagens Nyheter had published anonymous accounts by 18 women, who accused artist Jean-Claude Arnault - husband of a member, Katarina Frostenson, who ran a literary club associated with the Academy - sexual assault and harassment.</s>
• None The 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature will not hold as expected by literary giants and the world at large.
• None And the reason for the cancelling of the prestigious awards ceremony in 2018 is hinged on a sexual scandal involving the husband of a member of the Swedish Academy.

The 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature will not hold as expected by literary giants and the world at large.

And the reason for the cancelling of the prestigious awards ceremony in 2018 is hinged on a sexual scandal involving the husband of a member of the Swedish Academy - The Academy is responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature with provision of prize money by the Nobel Foundation since 1901.

Here are what we know

The crisis revolves around the Swedish Academy’s handling of its connections to

Jean-Claude Arnault, who is married to a Swedish Academy member, Katarina Frostenson was accused of sexually harassing women during the prestigious culture venue Forum in Stockholm between 1996 and 2017.

Frostenson had since resigned from the Swedish Academy on April 14, 2018 after the scandal broke in the media.

One of the women, who is also an author, Gabriella Håkansson had narrated how Arnault harassed her during the forum.

”He didn’t say many words before he grabbed me between my legs, and did a pussy grab. It was like he was digging. Nothing motivated the incident, and there had been no flirtation or touch. I just found a hand up my crotch,” Håkansson reportedly told Dagens Nyheter.

In another development, Arnault was accused of allegedly leaking names of Nobel Prize Literature laureates before they were officially announced for many years.

The scandal had thrown the Swedish Academy off its balance as many had blamed the leadership of Permanent Secretary Sara Danius for poorly handling the scandal.

From Sara Danius to Katarina Frostenson, Peter Englund, Kjell Espmark, Sara Stridsberg and writer Klas Östergren have all resigned from the Swedish Academy, hence leaving the academy to cancel the prestigious culture venue Forum in Stockholm in 2018.

The Swedish Academy intends to decide on and announce the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 in parallel with the naming of the 2019 laureate. Seven times previously, the Swedish Academy has chosen to declare a “reserved prize”: in 1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936 and 1949. On five of those occasions, the prize was delayed then awarded at the same time as the following year’s prize.

The present decision was arrived at in view of the currently diminished Academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy. Work on the selection of a laureate is at an advanced stage and will continue as usual in the months ahead but the Academy needs time to regain its full complement, engage a larger number of active members and regain confidence in its work, before the next Literature Prize winner is declared.

The active members of the Swedish Academy are in agreement that, without compromising the Academy’s purpose and to retain respect for its unique historical legacy, the Academy’s operative practices need to be evolved. The Academy has therefore newly begun a comprehensive work of change. One of the purposes is to modernise the interpretation of the Academy’s statutes, principally the question of resignation of membership. In addition, routines will be tightened regarding conflict-of-interest issues and the management of information classified as secret. Further, internal work arrangements and external communication will be refreshed.

“The active members of the Swedish Academy are of course fully aware that the present crisis of confidence places high demands on a long-term and robust work for change. We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence in the Academy before the next laureate can be announced. This, out of respect for previous and future literature laureates, the Nobel Foundation, and the general public,” says Anders Olsson, interim Permanent Secretary.

At least, four African writers have been honoured at the Nobel Prize for Literature since it began in 1901 and the literary ceremony has been cancelled seven times in the past. In 1935, the ceremony was cancelled because the Academy could not find a suitable candidate. The last time it was cancelled was in 1949.

Here are the past African winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Nigerian playwright and political activist, Wole Soyinka was the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Soyinka was recognized for “applying a wide cultural perspective and poetic overtones to fashions the drama of existence.”

In 1988, Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for ” works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous” that have ” formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind”. Mahfouz, who was regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, passed away in 2006.

Nadine Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 and became the third African to win the prize in recognition of her epic writing that has been tagged a great benefit to humanity.

In 2003, another South African, John Maxwell Coetzee, won the Nobel Prize for Literature where he was recognized as a writer “who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider.”</s>For the first time since the middle of World War II, the Nobel Foundation has decided to postpone awarding this year's Nobel Prize in Literature following a sexual misconduct scandal centered around the French husband of one of the academy's 18 members.

While the scandal might be unfamiliar to many readers in the US, it has roiled Swedish society, resulting in eight of the 18 members of the Nobel Academy resigning (even though their membership is technically a lifetime appointment without a provision for resignation) following a failed attempt to expel Katarina Frostenson, a member whose husband, French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, has been accused of sexual misconduct by 18 women, including Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria, whom he's accused of touching inappropriately, according to CNN.

Compounding the embarrassment for the academy, the press published a letter that had allegedly been sent to the academy in 1996 warning it of Arnault's behavior. Both Arnault and Frostenson had founded cultural forums in Sweden that had been receiving money from the Swedish Academy. The subsequent investigation has caused an uproar as the #MeToo movement comes to Sweden.

The lawyers also discovered that the academy had received a letter in 1996 outlining alleged sexual assault at Arnault's cultural forum, indicating that November was not the first time that at least some members of the academy were aware that the photographer's name had been connected with misconduct. It also confirmed that the academy had broken its own rules relating to conflicts of interest by providing funding to the cultural forum run by Arnault and Frostenson. In a statement in April, the Swedish Academy said it "deeply regrets that the letter was shelved and no measures taken to investigate the charges." The scandal has exposed deep divisions within the academy's membership and severely damaged its reputation, both in Sweden -- a country often considered a model for gender equality and abroad. Alexandra Pascalidou, a Swedish-Greek journalist and author of a book about the #MeToo movement in Sweden, told CNN earlier this week that the scandal had exposed the institution as "too stale and old-fashioned to be Sweden 2018."

In a statement, the Nobel Foundation, which oversees all the Nobel prizes, acknowledged that the crisis had tarnished its reputation and that delaying the prize "underscores the seriousness of the situation."

The Nobel Foundation, which oversees all the Nobel prizes, acknowledged the crisis had tarnished the wider organization and welcomed the Swedish Academy's announcement. "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. None of this impacts the awarding of the 2018 Nobel Prizes in other prize categories," it said in a statement.

Not everybody is upset that the prize is being postponed - in fact, some believe it should be scrapped altogether, particularly after it was awarded to US singer-songwriter Bob Dylan last year, a decision that befuddled literary critics.

Writing in the New York Times Opinion Section, Tim Parks questioned the purpose of the prize, arguing that literature isn't a competition, and that it makes little sense to pit literary works from disparate cultures against one another.

Literature is not tennis or football, where international competition makes sense. It is intimately tied to the language and culture from which it emerges. Literary style distinguishes itself by its distance from the other styles that surround it, implying a community of readers with a shared knowledge of other literary works, of standard language usage and cultural context. What sense does it make for a group from one culture — be it Swedish, American, Nigerian or Japanese — to seek to compare a Bolivian poet with a Korean novelist, an American singer-songwriter with a Russian playwright, and so on? Why would we even want them to do that?

Still, the Nobel Prize is perhaps the most prestigious literary award on the planet. Seeing it scrapped would be an epoch-defining moment in world literature. But of course, the Nobel Prize for Literature is hardly the only Nobel that's been tainted by scandal in recent years. Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during his first term with nothing in terms of actual accomplishments on his resume. And recently, Myanmar politician and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, who received the peace prize in 1991, has been accused of turning a blind eye as Burmese soldiers slaughtered members of a minority group in what is widely considered a genocide.</s>The Swedish Academy, which has become mired in controversy over its links to a man accused of sexual assault, announced on Friday morning that there would be no Nobel laureate for literature selected in 2018, as it attempts to come to terms with the unprecedented fallout.

For the first time in 75 years, the secretive jury that hands out the world’s most prestigious literary award will not unveil a winner this autumn, instead revealing two winners in 2019. The decision, announced at 9am Swedish time following a meeting on Thursday, comes after a string of sexual assault allegations made against the French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of academy member and poet Katarina Frostenson.

After the allegations against Arnault were made public in November, three members of the 18-strong jury that selects the literature laureate resigned in protest over the decision not to expel Frostenson. Arnault was also accused of leaking the names of seven former Nobel winners. He denies both claims.

With academy members engaging in unprecedented fights in the Swedish press, permanent secretary of the academy Sara Danius resigned on 12 April – to widespread protests in Sweden over the implication that she was taking the hit for male misbehaviour – as did Frostenson, after a three-hour meeting.

On Friday, the Nobel Foundation said it had been in a “continuous dialogue” with the Swedish Academy over the past weeks, and that it supported the decision to postpone the prize because “when a situation ... arises that is so serious that a prize decision will not be perceived as credible”.

“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. None of this impacts the awarding of the 2018 Nobel prizes in other prize categories,” said chairman of the board, Carl-Henrik Heldin.

Heldin added that the Nobel Foundation now expects the Academy to “put all its efforts” into “restoring its credibility”, and called on members to show “greater openness towards the outside world” in the future.

Membership of the body, which was established in 1786 by Swedish king Gustav III, is intended to be for life, resulting in any resignations leaving an empty chair until the jury member’s death. Following the spate of recent resignations, the Swedish king Carl XVI Gustaf announced he would change the academy’s statutes, allowing new members to be appointed to replace resigning members.



How the academy chooses the winner of the literature award has remained a mystery over the last century. Each February, academy members review around 200 nominations, coming up with a shortlist by May, and then reading up on the five authors still in the running for the prize over the summer. The winner is the author deemed to best fulfil Alfred Nobel’s desire to reward “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

The Nobel prize for literature has not been awarded on six previous occasions since its launch in 1901, although previously never over a scandal: in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943. The prize was paused during the first and second world wars and was not awarded in 1935 for reasons never disclosed. According to the academy’s statutes: “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year.”

The reputation of the prize, which has been won by names from Samuel Beckett to Rabindranath Tagore, was also called into question in 2016 when the academy voted for the musician Bob Dylan as its Nobel laureate “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.</s>On Friday morning, the Swedish Academy announced that the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature will be postponed until 2019, when two awards will be given out. The decision came as the result of "the infighting and public outrage that have engulfed the group over a sexual abuse scandal," according to The New York Times.

Scandal rocked the Swedish Academy in late 2017, when 18 women came forward to accuse Jean-Claude Arnault, who has close ties to the academy and is the husband of member Katarina Frostenson, of sexual assault and harassment. Allegations mounted later that Arnault had assaulted other women, including Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria. After members voted against forcing Frostenson out as part of the academy's endeavor to distance itself from Arnault, several other members left in protest. But the scandal didn't end there. In fact, it reached a fever pitch in April, when the Swedish Academy's first female permanent secretary, Sara Danius, stepped down from her role as the head of the organization because of her dissatisfaction with the academy's handling of the accusations. After the wave of resignations, just 10 active members remained.

All of those departures have left the Swedish Academy in crisis. Members join the academy for life, and empty seats cannot be filled until the death of an inactive holder. Additionally, because current regulations require 12 active members to elect new people, the academy is actually completely unable to fill the empty spots. The situation is so dire that King Carl XVI Gustav has agreed to step in to help maintain the Swedish Academy's functionality. Seriously, the King is coming in to straighten things out.

In the past, the Swedish Academy has postponed prizes when no author met its stringent requirement to "have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." The last time the award was postponed in such a manner was in 1943. But the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature marks the first time that the Swedish Academy has withheld the honor due to internal conflict. Acting permanent secretary Anders Olsson said in a Friday interview that "confidence in the academy from the world around us has sunk drastically in the past half year... and that is the decisive reason that we are postponing the prize."

Because this year's prize will be postponed, two laureates will receive the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature. Speaking with The Guardian last week, prize committee chair Per Wästberg said that his division of the Swedish Academy was still working as normal to bring the honor to a new literary icon, adding that, "members of the academy will spend summer reading and studying in depth the five candidates on the shortlist, regardless of an announcement this autumn or next."

The next Nobel Prizes in Literature will be awarded to two laureates in October 2019.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2018 is postponed to 2019 after Jean-Claude Arnault, husband of the former Swedish Academy member Katarina Frostenson, is accused of sexual assault, resulting in her resignation, and leaving the academy without a quorum.