Stockholm (AFP)

Peter Handke is to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature on Tuesday in Stockholm, where demonstrations are planned to denounce the pro-Serb positions of the Austrian writer during the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

In deciding in October to award the prestigious prize to the Carinthian novelist, the Swedish Academy sparked a wave of indignation in the Balkans and around the world because of Handke's support for Belgrade's ex-strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

This controversy would eclipse almost 2018 laureate Olga Tokarczuk, a psychologist by training and politically leftist, ecologist and vegetarian, who is the fifteenth woman to receive the prestigious award since its inception in 1901.

At the age of 77, Peter Handke will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustav in a formal ceremony with the winners of the other prizes, with the exception of the Oslo Peace Prize. Celebrations will culminate with a sumptuous banquet featuring 1,200 guests handpicked.

The Swedish Academy has awarded him the 2019 Nobel Prize for his work, "with ingenuous linguistic ingenuity, exploring the periphery and the singularity of the human experience", hailing "one of the most influential writers in Europe since the Second World War World ".

Handke "is not a political writer," insisted Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson.

- Boycotts -

The secular institution, which has always refrained from bringing politics into its walls, has mainly used these last two years to rebuild after the scandal of sexual assault that imploded in 2017. This case resulted in the postponement of the 2018 award to Olga Tokarczuk.

The choice of Peter Handke does not seem to have calmed the situation, on the contrary.

A Nobel committee member of literature had announced his resignation in early December because of this winner. And Friday, a few hours before a press conference by Peter Handke, a prominent academician, Peter Englund, had said he would not attend the award ceremony.

"I will not participate in Nobel Week this year, and celebrating Peter Handke's Nobel Prize would be pure hypocrisy on my part," wrote Peter Englund, historian and writer, in the daily Dagens Nyheter.

Perpetual secretary of the Swedish Academy between 2009 and 2015, Mr Englund covered the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans for Swedish newspapers.

Ambassadors from Kosovo, Albania, Turkey and Croatia also announced a boycott of the festivities.

In 1996, a year after the end of the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia, Peter Handke published a pamphlet, "Justice for Serbia", which sparked controversy. And in 2006 he went to the funeral of Milosevic, who died before hearing his verdict for war crimes in international justice.

- Events in Stockholm -

Hundreds of people are expected during the day to attend an anti-Handke demonstration in the heart of Stockholm, while a second rally is planned in front of Konserthuset, where the awards ceremony will take place.

"He has the right to write what he wants.The problem is that he is honored for his writings," responded the organizer of one of the demonstrations, Teufika Sabanovic, interviewed by AFP .

Born in 1990, she lost her father and most of her relatives during the Srebrenica genocide, where 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. "He defends war criminals, he accept genocide, accept Holocaust deniers, where is the limit of what is acceptable? "she asked.

During the traditional press conference of the winners of the prize of literature before the ceremonies of December 10th Friday, the writer dodged the controversy on his positions affirming to like "the literature, not the opinions".

But in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit in November, Handke defended his controversial support for Serbia. "None of the words I wrote about Yugoslavia are denounceable, not one, it's literature," the Austrian had assured.

Asked about his presence at the funeral of Milosevic, which had been a scandal, Peter Handke replied: "Of course I was there." In one of the last votes, he decided that Yugoslavia should not be dismantled. His grave was also the grave of Yugoslavia, and has anyone forgotten that this state was founded against Hitler's Reich? "

© 2019 AFP