Beneath a portrait of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and patron of the prizes, the committee convenes on Monday morning, four days before announcing the winner. They share coffee and pleasantries and then open proceedings; the finale of a months-long selection process. Looming large over the whole affair this year is one figure: Donald Trump.
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, seems unfazed by any sense of public pressure. "Every year, we receive thousands of letters, emails, requests, people saying 'this is the one you should choose' – so to have that campaign, the pressure… isn't really something new," he tells me. But, he adds diplomatically, that the unprecedented glare of this year hasn't gone unnoticed. Is it actually conceivable that the polarising US president could win? |
