Another Swedish Academy member quits amid deepening crisis

The crisis in the Swedish Academy deepened Friday as author and translator Sara Stridsberg became the sixth member to resign in just a month, Swedish media reported on Saturday.

The Swedish Academy, known around the world as the body that picks the Nobel literature laureates, now has only 10 active members, and eight vacant seats.

The crisis has led to speculations that the Nobel Prize in Literature may not be awarded this year.

"We really regret Sara Stridsberg's decision to leave the Academy. We are in the middle of a renewal process where her input would have been valuable," Anders Olsson, the Swedish Academy's stand-in permanent secretary, told the TT news agency.

Since Academy members are voted in for life, a resignation has up until recently meant that a member who decides no longer to take part in the Academy's work simply leaves a vacant seat behind but cannot be replaced until his or her death. Resignations have also, so far, been extremely rare.

However, earlier this month, after a number of members said they no longer intended to stay active, Sweden's King XVI Gustaf stepped in and changed the statutes of the Academy, which was founded in 1786 by King Gustaf III in order to advance the Swedish language and Swedish literature.

The changes mean members who are not actively taking part in the Academy's work can also ask to resign and can then be replaced.

With just ten active members, rumors are circulating that the Academy may cancel the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. According to Swedish Radio, there are people within the Nobel Committee and the Swedish Academy who believe the prize cannot and should not be awarded this year. However, that information has not been confirmed.

The Swedish Economic Crime Authority has started a preliminary investigation into suspected financial crime within the Academy after an inquiry found it had granted payments to a cultural club formerly run by a man married to an Academy member. The same man was last year accused of sexual harassment by a number of women who spoke to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter at the height of the "MeToo" movement.

Stridsberg was an ally of the former permanent secretary, Sara Danius, who left her post earlier this month, as did the wife of the man accused of sexual harassment.