Austrian author and playwright Peter Handke has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2019, with 2018’s postponed award going to Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk.
The 2018 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” while the 2019 prize went to Austrian author Peter Handke.
The Swedish Academy announced the winners of the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature. Because scandal postponed last year’s winner announcement, two prizes are being announced this year.
Tokarczuk won for works that explore the “crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” the academy said Thursday. Handke’s work was described as exploring “the periphery and the specificity of human experience” with linguistic ingenuity.
Nobel organizers say the committee suggests two names which then must be approved by the Swedish Academy.Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel specifically designated the Swedish Academy as the institution responsible for the Nobel Prize in literature.
Nobel decided the physics, chemistry and medicine should be awarded in Stockholm, and the peace prize in Oslo.Tokarczuk, who also won the Man Booker International Prize last year for her novel Flights, won for her “narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”
