Harold Pinter, who won this year's Nobel Prize in literature, will not attend next month's award ceremony in Stockholm for health reasons, the Nobel Foundation said Wednesday.
The prize will be accepted on behalf of the British playwright and poet by his publisher, Stephen Page, at the Dec. 10 ceremony, the foundation said.
Pinter, who has been treated for cancer in recent years, will still come to Stockholm before the ceremony to deliver a traditional lecture to the Swedish Academy on Dec. 7.
Pinter, 75, looked frail when he spoke to the media after winning the Nobel Prize in October. Later that month, he was awarded the Czech Republic's Franz Kafka literary prize but did not attend because of poor health.
Pinter's works include plays such as "The Caretaker," "The Room" and "The Birthday Party."
In the prize citation, the Swedish Academy said Pinter "restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles."
In 2002, Pinter revealed he was undergoing treatment for throat cancer. In a poem about his illness, he wrote: "I and my tumor dearly fight/Let's hope a double death is out."
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