Nobel academy member calls Dylan 'arrogant' and 'impolite'

A prominent member of the academy which awards the Nobel literature prize criticised this year's laureate Bob Dylan for not acknowledging the honour.

Dylan was termed "arrogant" and "impolite" on Friday as the academy struggled to get hold of American singer and songwriter.

The Swedish Academy has tried and failed multiple times to contact Dylan since the award was announced on October 13.

"It's impolite and arrogant," said the academy member, Swedish writer Per Wastberg, in comments aired on SVT public television.

Other than the tweet that went out from his official account, Dylan has not acknowledged the award at any of the performances in the week since the committee revealed this year's laureate.

He played a concert in Las Vegas and ended the show with a version of the Frank Sinatra hit "Why Try To Change Me Now?", taken to be a nod towards his longstanding aversion to the media.

Every December 10, Nobel prize winners are invited to Stockholm to receive a medal and a diploma from King Carl XVI Gusraf and give a speech during a banquet.

The academy could still not confirm whether Dylan would attend the award ceremony.

"This is an unprecedented situation," Wastberg said.

Anders Barany, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, recalled that Albert Einstein snubbed the academy after being awarded the physics prize in 1921.

In 1964 French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre refused the literature prize outright.

Dylan, 75, is the first artist seen primarily as a songwriter to win the award "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

Here's what people on social media think of Bob Dylan's silence: