Posted on December 2, 2019 at 3:30 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
NOTE: Updated December 6 with comments from Gun-Britt Sundström.
Two members of the Nobel Prize in Literature oversight committee have resigned, reports the Guardian.
Author Kristoffer Leandoer — told a Swedish newspaper Monday that the reforms he was chosen to help enact were taking too long.
Earlier this year, the Swedish Academy added five external members to the literature committee, as part of a cleanup effort following several scandals: one relating to sexual-harassment allegations against a committee member's husband; another regarding the inability to resign from the committee.
Leandoer also added his resignation was not linked to the controversy over Peter Handke’s 2019 prize.
Handke has been criticized for his past comments in support of convicted war criminal Slobodan Milošević, his attendance of Milošević’s funeral, his denial of the Srebrenica genocide, and his suggestion that Sarajevo’s Muslims had massacred themselves.
A second member — journalist Gun-Britt Sundström — later told media that her decision to resign was in fact connected to the Handke controversy.
Categories: Today in Books