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Nomination procedureEach year the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Members of the Academy, members of literature academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel literature laureates, and the presidents of writers' organizations are all allowed to nominate a candidate. However, it is not possible to nominate oneself. Thousands of requests are sent out each year, and about fifty proposals are returned. These proposals must be received by the Academy by February 1, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee. By April, the Academy narrows the field to around twenty candidates, and by summer the list is reduced further to some five names. In October that year, members of the Academy vote, and the candidate who receives more than half the number of votes is named the Nobel Laureate in Literature. The process is similar to those of other Nobel Prizes. In principle, nominations and deliberations remain secret for 50 years, but some nominations become known or are claimed by publicists. The prize money of the Nobel Prize has been fluctuating since its inauguration but as present stands at 10 million Swedish kronor. The winner also wins a gold medal and a Nobel diploma. Controversies
It has been suggested that W. H. Auden's poorly received (yet bestselling) translation to 1961 Peace Prize winner Dag Hammarskjöld's Vägmärken ("Markings"), coupled with statements made by Auden during a Scandinavian lecture tour suggesting that Hammarskjöld was homosexual (as was Auden), put paid to Auden's chances of receiving the prize.[2][3] The Nobel winner in 1970, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, did not attend the prize ceremony in Stockholm for fear that he would not be allowed to return afterwards to Russia (where his works were circulated in samizdat form). After the Swedish government refused to honor Solzhenitsyn with a public award ceremony and lecture at its Moscow embassy, Solzhenitsyn refused the award altogether, commenting that the conditions set by the Swedes (who preferred a private ceremony) were "an insult to the Nobel Prize itself." Solzhenitsyn did not accept the award, and prize money, until December 10 1974, following his arrest and deportation from the Soviet Union.[4] In 1974 Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and Saul Bellow were considered, but passed over for a joint award to Swedish authors, Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, both Nobel judges themselves. Bellow would win the prize in 1976; neither Greene nor Nabokov were honoured. The award to Dario Fo in 1997 was initially considered "rather lightweight" by some critics, as he was seen primarily as a performer and had previously been censured by the Roman Catholic Church. According to Fo's London publisher, Salman Rushdie and Arthur Miller were favourites to win that year, but the organisers stated that they would have been "too predictable, too popular".[5] The choice of the 2004 winner, Elfriede Jelinek, drew criticism from within the academy itself. Knut Ahnlund (who had not played an active role in the academy since 1996) resigned saying that picking Jelinek had caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation.[6] Jorge Luis Borges was considered for the prize for many years but, as Borges' biographer Edwin Williamson stated, he did not receive it due to his political views. List of Nobel Laureates in Literature | ||||||
