The minutes of the Nobel Prize for Literature are secreted for 50 years, then become public: this year the ‘Royal Swedish Academy‘ desecretised the documents relating to the 1972 edition. The Stockholm newspaper ‘Svenska Dagbladet‘ reports that it was in those minutes that the name of Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002), the Swedish author of ‘Pippi Longstocking’, first appeared among the Nobel candidates, having been proposed by three German academics. The Academy ‘took no further action’ and did not vote for the writer: ‘The worldwide fame and undeniable talent of the author are not considered sufficient grounds to recommend the proposal immediately’. Lindgren was never awarded the Nobel Prize, but received numerous prizes and awards, including the ‘Hans Christian Andersen Award’, the ‘Lewis Carroll Shelf Award’, the ‘Unesco International Book Award’ and the ‘Right Livelihood Award’, considered the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’. After her death, the Swedish government created an award in her memory, the ‘Astrid Lindgren Memorial’, now considered the Nobel Prize for children’s authors.
List of Honours and Awards presented to Astrid Lingren
