For ” an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience,” the Swedish Academy has awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature to Australian Writer, Peter Handke.
This is as they also awarded the 2018 edition to Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”
Tokarczuk’s award was delayed over a sexual harassment scandal. Her books portray a polychromatic world perpetually in motion, with characters’ traits intermingled and language that is both precise and poetic.
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.
