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SWEDEN-FRANCE-NOBEL-LITERATURE-RESIGN
Nobel figure quits after Swedish body’s #MeToo scandal
STOCKHOLM, Feb 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Sara Danius resigned Tuesday from the
Swedish Academy that selects the Nobel Prize in Literature, almost a year
after she was forced out as permanent secretary by a #MeToo scandal.
The Swedish academic’s resignation is the latest development in a scandal
that emerged from the #MeToo movement to halt sexual abuse, and forced the
Academy to postpone awarding the literature prize in 2018.
“I have decided to give up my seat… once occupied by the first woman
elected to the Academy, Selma Lagerloef,” Danius, 56, said in a statement.
“It has been an honour,” she added, without giving a reason for her
decision.
In April 2018, Danius was forced to step down as the Academy’s permanent
secretary, the first woman to hold that position, amid a scandal sparked by
Jean-Claude Arnault, an influential figure on Stockholm’s cultural scene.
He was convicted of raping a young woman in October and December 2011 and
the academy was caught up in the scandal because Arnault was married to one
of its members, Katarina Frostenson.
Arnault, who is French, was accused by 18 women in all, and has appealed
his conviction to Sweden’s supreme court.
The Swedish Academy had also funded Arnault’s Forum club, which was
popular among aspiring young authors hoping to make contact with publishers
and writers.
Danius, a literary scholar, joined the Academy in 2013 and became its
permanent secretary two years later.
As such she was the voice and face of the body that awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature to Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievitch, US
songwriter Bob Dylan and British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.
BSS/AFP/RY/20:40 hrs