The Nobel Winners Insight And Critics

The 2018 Nobel has been awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk – who won the 2018 Man Booker International prize for her novel Flights – “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”

 The 2019 Nobel has been awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”


Who is Olga Tokarczuk?

Edinburgh, UK. 25th August 2017. Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish writer, appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Gary Doak / Alamy Live NewsK0W729 Edinburgh, UK. 25th August 2017. Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish writer, appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Gary Doak / Alamy Live News
Torkarczuk 


Torkarczuk is a surprising, but an excellent choice. The judges are describing her as “a writer preoccupied by local life ... but looking at earth from above ... her work is full of wit and cunning.”

Aside from her novels, which are wide-ranging and brilliantly translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Jennifer Croft, she also has political heft. As public intellectual, feminist vegetarian, she has frequently rankled the conservative edges of Poland.

In a television interview after she won the Nike award (Poland’s Booker equivalent), Tokarczuk outraged rightwing patriots by saying that, contrary to its self-image as a plucky survivor of oppression, Poland itself had committed “horrendous acts” of colonisation at times in its history. She was branded a “targowiczanin” – an ancient term for traitor – and her publisher had to hire bodyguards for a while to protect her.

Who is Peter Handke?

Peter Handke.
The Austrian playwright and author is a more controversial decision than Tokarczuk. His selection come days after the Swedish Academy promised to move away from the “male-oriented” and “Eurocentric” past of the Nobel prize in literature. Handke doesn’t change either of those directions.

His bibliography contains novels, essays, note books, dramatic works and screenplays. He has lived in Paris since the 1990s, and is most famous for his play The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (completely dialogue free), his screenwriting credit for Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire and particularly the novel Die Wiederholung (Repetition).

Handke, who has Slovenic origins on the maternal side, famously gave a speech at the 2006 funeral of Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević, a decision that was criticised widely. His nomination for the Heinrich Heine prize that same year was eventually withdrawn due to his political views. His 2014 win of the International Ibsen award was also met by protests in Oslo.



Nobel prize in literature: reactions after Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke win – as it happened
Read Full Text from The Guardian





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