Dobrica Ćosić, the hoax Nobel

The news took Serbs by surprise. On October 6, the nationalist writer "Dobrica Ćosić [won] the Nobel Prize for an hour," [headlines Danas](http:// http://www.danas.rs/danasrs/drustvo/cosic_bio_nobelovac_sat_vremena_.55.html?news_id=225270). The daily says that the hoax, which was taken up by various media such as Serbian radio B92 and the Guardian newspaper, was the work of a group of artists in Belgrade who set up a spoof website of the Swedish Academy announcing the prize had been given to Ćosić. The group said it wanted to draw attention to "the dangerous influence on the public of the writer Dobrica Ćosić," former member of the Communist Party and the intelligence services, and a leading Serbian nationalist figure. The real Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.