SOURCE: Williams, Carol J. “Dubious Maneuvers Soil Nobel.” Los Angeles Times (1 November 2000): A1, A6.

In the following essay, Williams contends that the Swedish Academy's Nobel Prize committee has a conflict of interest that puts into question the validity of Gao's winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Somewhere between shameless promoter of personal interests and champion of a once little-known literary talent from China stands an unapologetic Goran Malmquist, 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...