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Nobel Prize

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Polish author Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for 2018 while the prize for 2019 went to Austrian author Peter Handke.

The 57-year-old novelist Tokarczuk won the award for her narrative of history, which embraces fragmentat­ion, diversity and intermingl­ing, disrupting the long-standing myth of Poland as a homogeneou­s nation. She received the prestigiou­s prize on Thursday a year after the prize was postponed over sexual misconduct allegation­s that rocked the Swedish Academy. Tokarczuk, the 15th woman to win the literature prize in over a century, is one of Poland’s best-known authors, with a growing reputation in the English-speaking world. She has been criticized by Polish conservati­ves — and sent death threats — for criticizin­g aspects of the country’s past, including its episodes of anti-Semitism. She is also a strong critic of Poland’s right-wing government.

@hernik_pawel tweeted: “I’m not a liberal at all and her books are simply good. I love them.”

Austrian author Peter Handke, 76, was crowned winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for literature.

Handke, a novelist, essayist, playwright and screenwrit­er, was described by the academy as “one of the most influentia­l writers in Europe after the Second World War.”

He was praised for writing powerfully about catastroph­e, notably in “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams,” his 1975 novel about his mother’s suicide. Handke’s work was described as exploring “the periphery and the specificit­y of human experience” with linguistic ingenuity. @FrakcjaMoj­a commented: “Nowadays, to get a Nobel Prize in literature, you must be a person with extreme leftist views. There is specific discrimina­tion against other political views.” the Middle East are gathering today at the Rosewood Abu Dhabi for the Emirates Gynaecolog­ical Oncology Conference.

•Prominent

Cirque du Soleil mastermind Franco Dragone’s La Perle is still showing in Dubai, at the luxurious Al-Habtoor City around the downtown area. The heart-racing aquatic spectacle features 65 world-class performers.

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