AUSTRIAN HANDKE WINS LITERATURE NOBEL
POLISH NOVELIST & ACTIVIST OLGA TOKARCZUK ALSO BAGS THE HONOUR
STOCKHOLM: Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk on Thursday won the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, which was delayed over a sexual harassment scandal, while Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke took the 2019 award.
Tokarczuk, 57, considered the most talented Polish novelist of her generation, was honoured “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”.
Her books portray a polychromatic world perpetually in motion, with characters’ traits intermingled and language that is both precise and poetic.
Tokarczuk becomes just the 15th woman to have won the prestigious distinction, out of 116 literature laureates honoured since 1901.
Handke, 76, was meanwhile honoured “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”, the Academy said.
Ironically, in 2014 Handke called for the Nobel Literature Prize to be abolished, saying it brought its winner “false canonisation”.
The son of a German soldier he only met in adulthood, Handke “has established himself as one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War”, the Academy said.
Tokarczuk and Handke each take home a cheque worth nine million kronor ($912,000).
The Swedish Academy is at pains to repair its reputation after a devastating scandal that saw Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, who has close ties to the Academy, jailed for rape in 2018.