The Swedish Academy has decided to postpone the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2018 on Friday, according to an official statement on its website. Instead, the academy is set to award two prizes in the following year, one for 2018 and one for 2019. The news comes at a time where the reputed academy has been embroiled with sexual misconduct allegations, a decrease in numbers of its it board members who have recently resigned and the leaking of previous Nobel prizewinners’ names ahead of formal announcements. “The present decision was arrived at in view of the currently diminished Academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy,” said the official statement. Recently, the academy has been dealing with increasing pressure due to the allegations of sexual transgression of the husband of one its board members. Photographer, Jean Claude-Arnault, who is married academy member and poet Katarina Frostenson, has denied all allegations through his lawyer, according to media reports. However, in November, the French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault was accused by 18 women of sexual assault and, according to the BBC, the ‘groping’ of the Crown Swedish Princess Victoria in 2006. This…
