After the prize was postponed last year due to a sexual harassment scandal, two Nobel medals were awarded
And there we leave the literature prize for another year. (Let’s assume it is now a yearly event.)
Here is my colleague Alison Flood’s news story on the prize, which will be updated throughout the day as we get reactions:
The 2019 Nobel peace prize will be announced on Friday at 11am CEST (10am BST).
One of Olga Tokarczuk’s translators has been in touch: Jennifer Croft, who most recently translated Flights (which won the 2018 Man Booker International prize).
Croft says: “I’m so thrilled for Olga and so excited for all the new readers who are bound to discover her delicate, powerful, beautifully nuanced novels and short stories thanks to the prize.”
Handke also called for the Nobel to be abolished in 2014, saying it was a “false canonisation” of literature.
“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. Was he just a sore loser? “Of course it’s [a prize] that bothers you, then you’re annoying yourself because you think about it. It’s so unworthy, and at the same time you’re just so unworthy of it.”
The choice of Peter Handke seems incredibly strange, given the Nobel committee had shown so many indications of moving away from incendiary laureates.
The Nobel committee decides to dig itself out of scandal by awarding this year's Nobel prize in literature to an Austrian defender of Milosevic who denies that the Srebrenica massacre happened.
— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) October 10, 2019
Way to read the times, Nobel committee 🙄https://t.co/laYvRWUt0w
While initially left-leaning in his youth, his increasingly pro-Milosevic stance saw many writers distance themselves from him in the 1990s. After the end of the three-year Serbian siege of Sarajevo, he claimed that the Muslims had staged their own massacres in Sarajevo and had blamed this on the Serbs.
Then, Alain Finkielkraut, the Paris intellectual, said Handke had become “an ideological monster”, while Slavoj Zizek – who is Slovene – said Handke’s “glorification of the Serbs is cynicism”. And Susan Sontag, who had spent several months in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war staging a performance of Waiting For Godot, said that Handke was now “finished” in New York.
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.
The Nobel committee have ended the press conference by confirming that both authors each win 9m Swedish krona (£746,678). “It is a full prize,” one judge said, slightly rattled that we haven’t all got the hang of this two prize thing yet.
We’ve been told Tokarczuk is currently on the train in Germany. Blimey. Let’s hope they have some bubbly on board.
Who is Olga Tokarczuk?
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.
Read a recent interview with her here.
The panel have emerged to explain their decision making. This is far more open process already than previous years.
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.”
BREAKING NEWS:
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2019
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 is awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2019 is awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke.#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/CeKNz1oTSB
How exciting.
With the head of the Swedish Academy promising to move away from the prize’s “male-oriented” past, its important to remember that only 14 women have won, compared with 113 men. Only one laureate – the late Toni Morrison – is a woman of colour.
The 14 women who have won are:
Selma Lagerlof, 1909
Grazia Deledda, 1926
Sigrid Undset, 1928
Pearl Buck, 1938
Gabriela Mistral, 1945
Nelly Sachs, 1966
Nadine Gordimer, 1991
Toni Morrison, 1993
Wislawa Szymborska, 1996
Elfriede Jelinek, 2004
Doris Lessing, 2007
Herta Muller, 2009
Alice Munro, 2013
Svetlana Alexievich, 2015
If you need a last minute refresher as to why we have two Nobel laureates this year, Jon Henley has produced this summary:
The Swedish Academy, founded in 1786, is thought likely to try to avoid any controversy as it seeks to rebuild its reputation after the scandal exposed harassment, furious infighting, conflicts of interest and a culture of secrecy among its 18 members, who are elected for life and seen as the country’s guardians of culture.
The poet Katarina Frostenson was among seven academy members who left the body after bitter rows over how to handle rape accusations made in 2017 against her husband, Frenchman Jean-Claude Arnault, who was also accused of leaking the names of several prize winners.
The couple ran a cultural club in Stockholm that was part-funded by the academy, and several of the assaults committed by Arnault – who is now serving a prison sentence for rape – took place in academy-owned properties.
The academy has since made changes that it says will improve transparency, including allowing members to voluntarily resign, which they could not previously do. It has also pledged to review its lifetime membership policy and appointed five members to its selection committee from outside the body.
A late but worthy contender.
I’m on my way to the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature so stay tuned for updates! I am naturally hoping it goes to Coleen Rooney for mastery of the three act structure and iconic triple ellipses.
— Catherine Edwards (@CatJREdwards) October 10, 2019
You can watch it at the top of this liveblog. You can enjoy 10 minutes of nervous chatter among journalists.
The Japanese novelist is a frequent frontrunner for the prize. Last year, he withdrew from the New Academy award – the one off replacement for the Nobel in 2018 – citing a wish to concentrate on his writing.
Then, the New Academy said in a statement that Murakami had emailed them saying that it was a great honour to be shortlisted. But “Murakami then said his preference is to concentrate on his writing, away from media attention … The New Academy regrets but respects his decision.”
Will he accept the Nobel if it finally comes his way this year? Fans certainly hope so.
Nobel Prize in literature in a few days, who you got? Since they're awarding two this year, do they finally give one to Murakami?
— Stephen Williams (@StephenTBW) October 8, 2019
Fingers crossed for Haruki Murakami to finally win the Nobel Prize in Literature! Love him! ❤#HarukiMurakami #NobelPrize2019 #NobelPrizeLiterature
— Suraya Pelszynski (@thepelszynski) October 10, 2019