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NOBEL-PRIZE-LITERATURE LEAD
Olga Tokarczuk, Peter Handke win Literature Nobels
STOCKHOLM, Oct 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk on
Thursday won the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, which was delayed over a sexual
harassment scandal, while Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke took
the 2019 award, the Swedish Academy said.
Tokarczuk, 57, considered the most talented Polish novelist of her
generation, was honoured “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic
passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”.
Her books portray a polychromatic world perpetually in motion, with
characters’ traits intermingled and language that is both precise and poetic.
Tokarczuk’s first novel, “The Journey of the People of the Book,” released
in 1993, chronicles a failed expedition to find a mysterious book.
The daughter of a school librarian, she won the Booker International Prize
along with her translator Jennifer Croft for her 2007 novel “Flights”, whose
English version came out in 2017.
Her 900-page “The Books of Jacob”, which the Swedish Academy hailed as her
“magnum opus”, spans seven countries, three religions and five languages,
tracing the little-known history of Frankism, a Jewish messianic sect that
sprang up in Poland in the 18th century.
Released in 2014, its pages are numbered in reverse in the style of Hebrew
books.
The Academy called it a “remarkably rich panorama of an almost neglected
chapter in European history.”
– ‘Linguistic ingenuity’ –
Handke, 76, was meanwhile honoured “for an influential work that with
linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human
experience,” the Academy said.
Ironically, in 2014 Handke called for the Nobel Literature Prize to be
abolished, saying it brought its winner “false canonisation”.
The son of a German soldier he only met in adulthood, Handke “has
established himself as one of the most influential writers in Europe after
the Second World War,” the Academy said.
Handke also stoked controversy when he attended former Serbian president
Slobodan Milosevic’s funeral in 2006, and expressed sympathy for the Serbs in
the 1990s Yugoslav wars.
His works are filled with a strong desire to discover and to make his
discoveries come to life by finding new literary expressions for them, it
added.
Notable works include “Short Letter, Long Farewell”, the poetry collection
“The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld” and “A Sorrow Beyond
Dreams” about his mother, who killed herself in 1971.
He has also described Thomas Mann, a giant of German literature and a 1929
Nobel laureate, as a “terribly bad writer” churning out “condescending,
snotty-nosed prose”.
Tokarczuk and Handke each take home a cheque worth nine million kronor
($912,000, 828,000 euros).
Tokarczuk becomes just the 15th woman to have won the prestigious
distinction, out of 116 literature laureates honoured since 1901.
– Academy rocked by scandal –
Dating back to 1786, the Swedish Academy is at pains to repair its
reputation after a devastating scandal that saw Frenchman Jean-Claude
Arnault, who has close ties to the Academy, jailed for rape in 2018.
The Academy was torn apart by a deep rift between members over how to
manage their ties to him.
The dispute exposed scheming, conflicts of interest, harassment and a
culture of silence among its 18 members, long esteemed as the country’s
guardians of culture.
The revelations shook Sweden, a Lutheran nation that prides itself on
transparency and consensual democracy and is intolerant of inequality.
Arnault is married to Katarina Frostenson, a member of the Academy who
later resigned over the scandal at the height of the #MeToo movement against
harassment of women.
The pair also ran a cultural club in Stockholm that received funding from
the body.
Ultimately, seven members quit the Academy. In tatters, it postponed the
2018 prize until this year — the first delay in 70 years.
“From having been associated with literature of the highest order, the
Nobel Prize is for many now associated with #MeToo… and a dysfunctional
organisation,” Swedish literary critic Madelaine Levy told AFP.
Even before the scandal, the Academy had courted controversy in 2016 when
it gave the prestigious prize to US singer songwriter Bob Dylan, leading some
to question its judgement.
The Academy has in the past year been revamped with new members and
statutes. Literature professor Mats Malm took over as the new permanent
secretary in June.
“The changes have been very productive and we are hopeful for the future,”
Malm told AFP in an interview just days before the prize announcement.
He acknowledged the affair had tainted the institution and said
improvements were still needed.
“A lot of hard work remains, of that we are certain.”
BSS/AFP/ARS/1909 hrs