Busy and Badass: Bob Dylan Won’t Go to Stockholm to Pick Up Nobel

The 75-year-old American singer-songwriter, who was awarded the prize on 13 October, had made no comment on it.

File photo of Bob Dylan performing in Los Angeles. (Photo: AP)

The Swedish Academy said Bob Dylan is not coming to Stockholm to pick up his 2016 Nobel Prize for literature at the prize ceremony on 10 December.

The Academy says Dylan told them that "he wishes he could receive the prize personally, but other commitments make it unfortunately impossible."

The 75-year-old American singer-songwriter was awarded the prize on 13 October "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

The notoriously media-shy Dylan had not made any comment on the 8 million crown ($900,000) prize, despite repeated attempts by award-givers (the Swedish Academy) to contact him since it named him as the winner.

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"We look forward to Bob Dylan's Nobel Lecture, which he must give – it is the only requirement – within six months counting from 10 December," it said in a statement, adding that it would provide additional information on Friday 18 November.

The lecture need not be delivered in Stockholm. When British novelist Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel literature prize in 2007, she composed a lecture and sent it to her Swedish publisher, who read it out at a ceremony in the Swedish capital.

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(With Reuters and AP inputs)