Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, Austrian author Peter Handke win #NobelPrize for Literature
New Delhi: 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.
The #NobelPrize in Literature for 2018 is awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”
2018 Literature Laureate Olga Tokarczuk was born 1962 in Sulechów in Poland, and today lives in Wrocław. She made her debut as a fiction writer 1993 with ‘Podróz ludzi Księgi’ (‘The Journey of the Book-People’).NobelPrize laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s real breakthrough came with her third novel ‘Prawiek i inne czasy’ 1996 (‘Primeval and Other Times’, 2010). The novel is an excellent example of new Polish literature after 1989. Olga Tokarczuk, awarded the 2018 #NobelPrize in Literature, never views reality as something stable or everlasting. She constructs her novels in a tension between cultural opposites; nature versus culture, reason versus madness, male versus female, home versus alienation.The magnum opus of Literature Laureate Olga Tokarczuk so far is the impressive historical novel ‘Księgi Jakubowe’ 2014 (‘The Books of Jacob’). She has in this work showed the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding.
The #NobelPrize in Literature for 2019 is 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.”
2019 Literature Laureate Peter Handke was born 1942 in a village named Griffen, located in the region Kärnten in southern Austria. This was also the birthplace of his mother Maria, who belonged to the Slovenian minority. NobelPrize laureate Peter Handke’s debut novel ‘Die Hornissen’ was published in 1966. Together with the play ‘Publikumsbeschimpfung’ (‘Offending the Audience’, 1969), he certainly set his mark on the literary scene.
More than fifty years later, having produced a great number of works in different genres, 2019 Literature Laureate Peter Handke has established himself as one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War.