In an article in Svenska dagbladet, the author Kristoffer Leandoer writes about why he chose to leave the Nobel Committee - which appoints Nobel laureates in literature - in December 2019. Last week he told about the decision to the Albanian press, because he lives in Albania, but when Swedish media received news of his statement, he chose to give his own explanation in Svenska dagbladet.
"That Handke was worth the Nobel Prize, I then considered and still consider beyond any doubt.
On the other hand, I thought then as now that it was a decision that was incited, without sufficient grounding ", he writes.
The Swedish Academy's handling of, among other things, the media uproar that arose after the election of Peter Handke as Nobel Laureate in Literature made Kristoffer Leandoer ashamed, and also led him to believe that the Nobel Committee was only a pawn in the Academy's internal power play.
"Already in its first statements, the Academy chose to claim that this was a purely literary prize, which would be discussed and understood on purely literary grounds," he writes.
Kristoffer Leandoer believes that in retrospect he believes that the Academy wanted to consolidate its own view of literature as superior to the public by choosing a controversial author as a laureate: me and Handke on the alpine peak of pure literature, let the dogs be kept down there in the dunes among Forum receipts and funeral speeches in the Balkans. ”