translated from Spanish: 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature by American poet Louise Gluck

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded Thursday to the American poet Louise Gluck “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” The award was announced in Stockholm by Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy and comes after several years of controversy and scandal over the world’s pre-eminent literary award. In 2018, the award was postponed after allegations of sexual abuse rocked the Swedish Academy, the secret body that elects the winners, and provoked a mass exodus of members. After the academy was renewed in an attempt to regain the trust of the Nobel Foundation, last year two winners were appointed: the 2018 prize went to Polish Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 win for Austrian Peter Handke.Handke’s prize sparked a storm of protests: a strong supporter of Serbs during the Balkan wars of the 1990s , has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes. Several countries, including Albania, Bosnia and Turkey, boycotted the Nobel Prize ceremony in protest, and a committee member nominating candidates for the literature prize resigned. This year, the academy is likely to look for a more harmonious option for the $10 million prize (more than $1.1 million). On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the physiology and medicine prize for discovering the hepatitis C virus that devastates the liver. Tuesday’s physics award honored advances in understanding the mysteries of cosmic black holes, and Wednesday’s chemistry award went to scientists behind a powerful gene editing tool. There are still awards for outstanding work in the fields of peace and economics.

Original source in Spanish