The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday (at around 4:30 pm, IST) that the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature would be awarded to Polish novelist and activist Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 one to Austrian writer and translator Peter Handke. Both writers will win 9 million krona each.
No Nobel Prize for Literature was given in 2018 because of a scandal over sexual misconduct allegations that has seen a string of board members resign from the board of the Swedish Academy.
“Work on the selection of a laureate is at an advanced stage and will continue as usual in the months ahead but the Academy needs time to regain its full complement, engage a larger number of active members and regain confidence in its work, before the next Literature Prize winner is declared,” it had said in May last year.
Also read: Swedish Academy Postpones 2018 Nobel Literature Prize Over Sex Scandal
Olga Tokarczuk. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Tokarczuk, whom the Academy described as the writer of works “full of wit and cunning”, is understood to have been the yearlong choice for 2018. She was, said the Academy, awarded the honour “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”
Reports in the aftermath of the announcement describe Tokarczuk as the ultimate foil to the conservative upheaval in Europe. She is a noted feminist and an avowed liberal in her political outlook.
In 2018, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights. She is the first Polish writer to have done so. Her novels are usually translated by Jennifer Croft or Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Tokarczuk is the 15th woman to have won the literature Nobel.
Peter Handke. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Peter Handke, this year’s awardee, presents “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
The decision to pick Handke comes in the aftermath of the Academy’s avowed promise to move away from the “Eurocentric and male-dominated” choices of earlier years. Handke is also infamous for his appearance at former Serbian and Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević’s funeral. Milošević is a noted war criminal.
Handke’s opinions on the Yugoslav wars are at best controversial. He is best known for The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, and Slow Homecoming.
Both laureates will attend the award ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.