Poland’s Tokarczuk and Austria’s Handke get Nobel in literature
Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian writer Peter Handke were awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced at a ceremony in Stockholm.
Handke, an acclaimed novelist and playwright, won this year’s prize, while Tokarczuk, an experimental novelist and poet, won the 2018 prize, which had been postponed for a year because of a scandal at the academy.
Both authors are wellknown figures in Europe, renowned for their work but also for their sometimes polarizing political views. Tokarczuk has been an outspoken critic of right-wing nationalists in Poland, who have branded her a traitor. Her views have made her a target of the country’s ruling Law and Justice Party, and her Polish publisher at one point hired bodyguards to protect her.
Handke has been criticized for his support of Slobodan Milosevic, the former leader of Yugoslavia who was widely seen as a war criminal and the driving force behind the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Handke attended Milosevic’s war crimes trial at The Hague and delivered a eulogy at his funeral. In an interview in 2006, he said of Milosevic: “I think he was a rather tragic man. Not a hero, but a tragic human being. I am a writer and not a judge.”
In the same interview, he said he did not expect to ever win the Nobel Prize because of the controversy. “When I was younger I cared,” he said. “Now I think it’s finished for me after my expressions about Yugoslavia.”
“The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded on literary and aesthetic grounds,” Mats Malm, an academy member and its permanent secretary, said when asked about the academy’s selection of Handke. “It is not in the Academy’s mandate to balance literary quality against political considerations.”
Tokarczuk found out she received the prize while on the road in Germany.
In a telephone interview with Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, she said: “When I found out, I pull over. I still can’t wrap my head around it. I am also very happy that Peter Handke has received the award with me; I value him very much. It’s great that the Swedish Academy appreciated literature from the central part of Europe. I am glad that we are still holding on.”