STOCKHOLM: The Nobel Prize for Literature is set to be awarded on Thursday after several years of controversy and scandal for the world’s pre-eminent literary accolade.
In 2018, the award was postponed after sex-abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners and sparked a mass exodus of members.
After the academy revamped itself in a bid to regain the trust of the Nobel Foundation, two laureates were named last year, with the 2018 prize going to Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 award to Austria’s Peter Handke.
Handke’s prize caused a storm of protest — a strong supporter of the Serbs during the 1990s Balkan wars, he has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes. Several countries including Albania, Bosnia and Turkey boycotted the Nobel awards ceremony in protest and a member of the committee that nominates candidates for the literature prize resigned.