Stockholm (AFP)

A Nobel Peace Prize for Greta Thunberg? Even if the experts are cautious, the name of the young muse of the fight for the climate turns in loop, while the literature is offered two laureates after a white season last year.

The bookmakers favor the 16-year-old Swede who has mobilized millions of young people around the world since she launched, in September 2018, the "school strike" at the origin of the movement "Fridays for Future" .

But any prognosis is complicated, if not impossible, because of the absence of nominative list of the candidates submitted to the Norwegian Nobel Committee which awards the reward. And specialists remain divided on the reality of the link between conflict and climate change.

While waiting for the announcement on October 11 in Oslo, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize for literature, will have revealed its choice the day before in Stockholm.

2019 must mark the year 1 of the resurrection for this institution founded in 1786 on the model of the French Academy, put to the torture for two years by exposing its internal turpitude after a scandal of sexual assault.

The academy had to postpone for one year the announcement of the Nobel 2018 - a first for 70 years - lack of quorum of academicians required, and so he will have this year two medals to engrave in gold, one for 2018, the other for 2019, each embellished with a check of 9 million crowns (830,000 euros).

Except ... unless "the winners do not accept the price" devalued in their eyes, warns Madelaine Levy, critic in the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

As every year since 1901 literary salons rustle with a thousand rumors that we guess to be the echo of the desire of those who spread them.

The Polish Olga Tokarczuk and the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong'o are in the columns of the newspapers together with the Albanian Ismaïl Kadaré, the American Joyce Carol Oates and, eternally forgotten, the Japanese Haruki Murakami.

Lesson learned, the academy should not make waves and at least one woman will be awarded, predicted. "The Nobel (...), especially literature and peace, are still controversial," warns Olivier Truc, author of "The Nobel Affair" (Grasset).

Bob Dylan's coronation in 2016 outraged the guardians of the Temple. In 2017, that of the British writer of Japanese origin Kazuo Ishiguro, more consensual, had been perceived as a repair.

- The French 'Weinstein' -

The sources of the scandal, the publication in November 2017 anonymous testimonies accusing a personality close to the Academy of sexual assault, harassment and rape.

The revenge, appeared a few weeks after the implosion of the American film producer Harvey Weinstein and the launch of the #MeToo movement, targeted the French Jean-Claude Arnault, married to an academician, the poet Katarina Frostenson. She has since been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for rape, she has returned her chair.

The explosion caused an avalanche of departures within the Academy, corrupted by clans and struggles of pride. So much so that King Carl XVI Gustaf, protector of the academy, had to intervene, a rare event in this democracy where the monarchy is held in a ceremonial role.

The Swedish Academy has since been revamped or almost, changed its statutes, promised more transparency in its operation.

- A price for Greta? -

In 2018, the Nobel Peace Prize was returned to two heralds of the fight against sexual violence, Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege and Yazidie Nadia Murad.

For the 2019 edition, "Greta" is the favorite of online betting sites but predictions in this area are extremely risky.

"What she has done over the past year is extraordinary," said Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). "Climate change is a problem that is closely linked to security and peace," he adds.

"Extremely unlikely", however, says the director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute (Prio), Henrik Urdal, arguing that it is too young and that the link between warming and armed conflict remains to be proven.

Among the Nobel laureates are Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a reconciliation worker with Eritrea, and NGOs such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has registered 301 nominations this year, but it never reveals its identity.

The Nobel season will open with the scientific prizes (medicine, physics and chemistry) and will end on October 14 with that of economy, created in 1968 to celebrate the 300 years of the Bank of Sweden.

© 2019 AFP