Nobel Prize controversies works there were available only in samizdat-published, clandestine form. After the Swedish government refused to hold a public award ceremony and lecture at its Moscow embassy, Solzhenitsyn refused the award altogether, commenting that the conditions set by the Swedes (who preferred a private ceremony) were "an insult to the Nobel Prize itself." Solzhenitsyn later accepted the award on 10 December 1974, after the Soviet Union banished him. Critics suggest that Solzhenitsyn was awarded the prize because of his political stance, not his writing. Leo Tolstoy was nominated for the two first-ever Nobel Prizes in Literature. In the first year, the
Nobel Prize in Literature never won; as biographer Gordon Bowker wrote, "That prize was just out of Joyce's reach." The academy considered Czech writer Karel Čapek's "War with the Newts" too offensive to the German government. He also declined to suggest some noncontroversial publication that could be cited as an example of his work, stating "Thank you for the good will, but I have already written my doctoral dissertation". He was thus denied the prize. Spanish playwright Àngel Guimerà, who wrote in the Catalan language was nominated twenty-three times for the Nobel Prize, though he never won, due to controversy about the political significance