STOCKHOLM: Austrian writer Peter Handke won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday and Polish author Olga Tokarczuk was named as the 2018 winner after a sexual assault scandal led to last year’s award being postponed.

The Swedish Academy which chooses the literature laureate said it had recognised Handke, 76, for a body of work including novels, essays and drama “that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”.

Tokarczuk, 57, won for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” it said.

Both have courted controversy — Handke for his portrayal of Serbia as a victim during the Balkan wars and attending its leader’s funeral, and Tokarczuk for touching on dark areas of Poland’s past that contrast with the version of history promoted by the country’s ruling nationalist party.

Two prizes were awarded this year after last year’s award was postponed over a scandal that led to the husband of an Academy member being convicted of rape.

Since then, the organisation has appointed new members and reformed some of its more arcane rules after a rare intervention by its royal patron, the king of Sweden.

Academy member Anders Olsson said both Handke and Tokarczuk had accepted their prizes. “I only talked to Peter Handke myself. He was very, very moved. At first he did not utter any words,” Olsson said. He added: “It is not a political prize, it is a literary prize.”

Controversies

Handke, a native of the Austrian province of Carinthia, which borders Slovenia, established himself as one of the most influential writers in Europe after World War Two, the Academy said. He also co-wrote the script of the critically-acclaimed 1987 film Wings of Desire.

The author of books such as The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and Slow Homecoming, he attracted widespread criticism attending the funeral of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2006.

A perennial candidate for the world’s top literary prize, Handke appeared to have given up the idea of winning, telling The New York Times in 2006 he no longer cared. “Now I think it’s finished for me after my expressions about Yugoslavia,” he said in an interview with the paper.

Crossing boundaries

Tokarczuk trained as a psychologist before publishing her first novel in 1993. Since then, she has produced a steady and varied stream of works and her novel Flights won her the high-profile Man Booker International Prize last year. She was the first Polish author to do so.

She wrote on Facebook: “Nobel Prize for Literature! Joy and emotion took my speech away. Thank you very much for all your congratulations!” She later told Polish broadcaster TVN she was proud that her books covering small towns in Poland can be read universally and be important for people elsewhere in the world.

“I believe in the novel. I think the novel is something incredible. This is a deep way of communication, above the borders, above languages, cultures. It refers to the in-depth similarity between people, teaches us empathy,” she said.

Though some episodes she has written about do not reflect the version of history promoted by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice, her agent said the award should not be seen in the context of a parliamentary election Poland will hold on Sunday.

On winning a Polish literary award in 2015 for The Book of Jacob, which deals with Poland’s relations with its Jewish minority and neighbouring Ukraine, she outraged nationalists with her comments and received death threats.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2019