In the past two years, the 18-member Academy has bestowed the prestigious prize on US poet Louise Gluck and Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah, two writers whose work had not been widely translated and was not known to the broad public—or even some publishers
American poet Louise Gluck, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, poses outside her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. The Swedish Academy is slowly recovering from a devastating #MeToo scandal that led to the postponement of the 2018 prize, and is now very conscious of its reputation when it comes to diversity and gender representation. Image: Nobel Prize Outreach/Daniel Ebersole/Handout via REUTERS