Nobel Prize Winners Are Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk

The Nobel Prize committee has announced laureates for both 2018 and 2019 this morning, marking the Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian author and playwright Peter Handke as the newest Nobel winners, reports The Guardian. Handke was a controversial choice, writes Alison Flood. More:

Picking Handke, who was cited for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”, as 2019’s winner has already provoked controversy. The Kosovan ambassador to the US, Vlora Çitaku, called the decision “scandalous … a preposterous and shameful decision”.

The Austrian playwright and novelist, who has Slovene roots on his maternal side, spoke at the 2006 funeral of Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević, declaring “I don’t know the truth. But I look. I listen. I feel. I remember. This is why I am here today, close to Yugoslavia, close to Serbia, close to Slobodan Milošević.” After widespread criticism, he turned down a nomination for the Heinrich Heine prize before politicians could withdraw it over his political views. His 2014 win of the International Ibsen award was met by protests in Oslo.

Perhaps more gallingly for the Nobel committee, Handke also called for the prize to be wound up in 2014. “The Nobel prize should finally be abolished,” he told Austrian newspaper Die Presse, adding that though it delivered “a moment of attention, six pages in the newspaper”, he did not admire the choices. Recalling that Handke had called the prize a “false canonisation” of literature, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said this year’s award “proves that he was right”.

More strange assertions from Žižek at The Guardian.