Swedish Academy announces no Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018

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The Swedish Academy has decided it will not award the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, and instead will announce the winner next year, along with the 2019 laureate.

"The present decision arrived in view of the currently diminished Academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy," the organization said in a statement.

The organization has been engulfed in controversy over sexual assault allegations since November, in the wake of the global #MeToo campaign, when Swedish newspaper 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.

File of cameras placed for a press conference to announce the laureate of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. /VCG Photo

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.

The Swedish Academy, 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.

(With inputs from AFP)