Dubious Maneuvers Soil Nobel

Somewhere between shameless promoter of personal interests and champion of a once little-known literary talent from China stands an unapologetic Goran Malmqvist, a member of the Swedish Academy whose behavior in this year’s Nobel literature prize selection has besmirched the world of letters’ sanctum sanctorum.

A retired Stockholm University professor of Chinese languages and literature, Malmqvist just happens to be the Swedish translator of this year’s laureate, exiled dissident Gao Xingjian. He’s also the confessed middleman in the writer’s recent defection from one Swedish publisher to another just before the Nobel announcement.

The nine-month deliberations leading up to literature’s most prestigious award are supposed to be held in the strictest confidence. Malmqvist insists that he neither broke the Swedish Academy’s vow of silence nor did anything wrong in steering Gao into the hands of a publishing friend.

“There were no leaks from the Swedish Academy--certainly not from me. I’m not that foolish,” Malmqvist said Tuesday from Stockholm in a telephone interview with The Times. “No member of the Swedish Academy is allowed to say anything about the prize before it is announced.”

The announcement of the 60-year-old Gao’s selection came Oct. 12, with a citation in which the academy said that in his writing, “literature is born anew from the struggle of the individual to survive the history of the masses.” Gao, now a French citizen, has written stories, essays and plays, but the citation called his nearly 700-page novel, “Soul Mountain,” written in the 1980s, “masterful.”

And while disavowing any impropriety, Malmqvist readily conceded that he advised Gao to take “Soul Mountain” to Kjell Petersson at Stockholm’s Atlantis Publishers, where Malmqvist also tried to transfer his own translation rights from the rival house that launched Gao’s works in Sweden, Forum Publishers of the Bonnier Group.

Those behind-the-scenes maneuvers stirred up unseemly squabbles in the tiny Swedish publishing realm, which takes pride in the country’s outsize role in recognizing the best of the written word. But the scandal has since taken on international proportions. Cultural figures gathered at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week denounced the translator’s actions as self-serving, unprofessional and damaging to both the vaunted academy and the Nobel Prize in literature.

“He has struck a severe blow against the reputation of the Swedish Academy,” said German Culture Minister Michael Naumann, himself a former New York publisher.

“The eccentricity of the Swedish Academy’s decisions has always vexed people,” Naumann said. “But eccentricity with concomitant commercial interests puts the credibility of the entire academy in doubt.”

Few Willing to Be Publicly Critical

One Swedish literary agent who was at the Frankfurt gathering explained, on condition she not be identified, that few in the interdependent business world of literature are willing to publicly criticize Malmqvist or Atlantis for fear of being “blacklisted” for future publication rights.

Jane Friedman, president and chief executive of HarperCollins, which last month bought the North American rights to “Soul Mountain,” said: “We don’t really know about this brouhaha. I was surprised to hear this.”

Even Bonnier and Forum executives choose their words carefully in questioning the ethics of those they consider to be practicing the literary equivalent of insider trading.

“What should be said about the role of the academy and whether Mr. Malmqvist said things he shouldn’t have, that’s not for Bonnier to get involved in,” said Jonas Modig, president of the publishing group. “We don’t want to express open criticism of the academy. . . . We have to preserve our relations with them.”

Executives at the jilted Forum, which had hoped to recoup losses from earlier Gao works that failed to sell in Sweden, said they are in principle satisfied with an out-of-court settlement reached with Atlantis in the past week that will allow them to issue a new edition of Gao short stories first published by Forum in 1988.

That compromise, for which Forum must pay Malmqvist “a small sum” for the translation it already paid for, also obliges Forum to drop its legal pursuit of the rights to other Gao works, said Forum public relations director Annelie Eldh.

Eldh and others point to a number of suspicious coincidences as evidence that ethical rules were broken. Forum was informed by letter from Petersson a couple of days before the Nobel announcement that Atlantis was taking over rights to Gao works in light of a purported letter sent to Forum by the author July 6--a letter both Bonnier and Forum say they never got.

Swedish Academy Sees Nothing Amiss

The Swedish Academy, whose 18 members make the final selection of a Nobel laureate after a 16-person prize committee narrows the nominations to a handful, takes the public position that nothing untoward occurred in this year’s decision.

“As we understand it, there was nothing inappropriate,” said Carola Hermelin, the academy administrator who serves as its spokeswoman. “We only say that members should be very careful and sensitive.”

Those outside the hallowed institution, however, insist that there is most certainly an academic tongue-lashing being directed at Malmqvist and other members whose private interests might compromise the academy’s reputation.

The Swedish Authors Assn., of which Malmqvist is a member, brushes off any suggestion that professional standards are needed and insists that the out-of-court settlement reached by Forum and Atlantis closes the issue.

While Swedish journalists covering cultural affairs commented on the questionable actions of Malmqvist immediately after the prize announcement, they say the issue never really riled anyone in Sweden outside literary circles.

“I think he did leak information, although maybe not directly. I think he wanted something good to come of this, and I don’t think he sees anything he did as wrong,” said Asa Beckman, literary critic for the influential Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “I think he’s just very enthusiastic about his work.”

Malmqvist said he steered Gao, whose works he has translated since the 1970s, to Petersson because he thought the author’s earlier works hadn’t been properly promoted by Forum.

“Mr. Petersson has read 98% of Gao Xingjian’s literature. He has the right to guess, as anyone else does, who would be the recipient” of the Nobel Prize, Malmqvist said of the Atlantis chief’s insight into the commercial and cultural value of Gao’s work. “Mr. Petersson has a nose for literature--he reads books for a living--and having heard me say this is a very important talent might have had its influence. I liked it [‘Soul Mountain’] and wanted him to publish it, and the fact that I’m a member of the Swedish Academy cannot hinder me from uttering my views about Chinese literature.”

Malmqvist bristled at the suggestion that he was pursuing his own financial interests in promoting Gao within the academy and simultaneously attempting to shift his translation rights to Atlantis.

“I don’t translate for money. It’s my hobby and my pleasure,” insisted the scholar, who has held an academy seat since 1985. Malmqvist said he has earned only about $8,000 from his previous translations of Gao--”less than a cleaning woman working for black-market money would accept.”

Petersson, the new publisher--who expects to have “Soul Mountain” on Swedish bookstore shelves later this month--also rejected any suggestion of impropriety or profit motive. With an initial printing of 5,000 planned for a work described in the profession as “highly literary”--meaning unlikely to enrapture the masses--Atlantis has no expectations of fortune, he says.

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Times staff writer Beverly Beyette in Los Angeles contributed to this report.