On Thursday, October 10, the Swedish Academy announced the names of Nobel Prize winners in literature for 2018 and 2019.
Members of the committee awarded the prize for 2018 to the Polish writer Olga Tokarchuk - "for the narrative imagination, which with encyclopedic passion represents border crossing as a form of life." The 2019 prize winner was an Austrian writer and translator Peter Handke wording for “an influential work that explores the boundaries and specifics of human experience with linguistic ingenuity”.
Both writers hold prestigious literary awards. In 2018, Tokarchuk received the International Booker Prize for the novel Runners, Handke won the Schiller Memorial Prize and the Georg Buchner Prize.
BREAKING NEWS:
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. # NobelPrizepic.twitter.com / CeKNz1oTSB
The names of applicants for the Nobel Prize are usually kept secret for 50 years, however, bookmakers express their assumptions from year to year. In 2019, in their opinion, the Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Japanese prose writer Haruki Murakami (by the way, a permanent defendant in the lists of bookmakers), as well as poets Anne Carson (Canada) and Adonis (Syria) could apply for the award.
Bookmakers, in particular, were guided by the success of the film adaptations of literary works: the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, whose “Handmaid's Tale” became the basis for the series, could be among the nominees. The author of the novel “Song of Ice and Fire,” George R.R., also fell into this short list. Martin.
Also among the favorites, according to bookmakers, were French authors Milan Kundera (of Czech origin) and Marise Conde (Guadeloupe native). According to regional characteristics, experts distinguished the candidatures of the playwright from Kenya Ngugi Wa Thiongo and the Somali writer Nuruddin Farah - it is believed that the Academy takes into account the distribution of awards by country, while the prize has not been awarded to representatives of Africa since 2003.
Nobel scandal - 2018
It is worth noting that the Swedish Academy named the names of two winners of the Nobel Prize in literature at once, contrary to the regulations. It was decided to do so after the scandal of 2018.
Then no one received the award: the cancellation of the Nobel Prize was explained by the reduction in the size of the committee and the weakening of public trust in representatives of the Swedish Academy. In a statement by the interim permanent secretary of the institute, Anders Olsson, the crisis was reported.
The Western media saw the origins of this situation in a scandal surrounding a French-Swedish photographer, artistic director of the Stockholm literary club Forum and the wife of one of the academy's members, Jean-Claude Arnault.
In the fall of 2017, the photographer was accused of sexual harassment of 18 women. In addition, media noted, Arno was convicted of divulging the names of Nobel laureates to outsiders before the academy officially announced the winners. It also turned out that the Forum club led by Arno, through the photographer’s wife, the Swedish poet Katarina Frostenson, received funding from the Nobel Foundation.
Against the backdrop of allegations of leakage of information about the laureates of the award and the illegal use of fund funds, Frostenson left the Swedish Academy. At the same time, several more people left the committee, among them the permanent secretary Sarah Danius. As a result, only ten people remained on the committee, while 12 votes were needed to select the winners.
Arno was sentenced to two years in prison in a rape case. The photographer was also ordered to pay compensation to the plaintiff in the amount of 115 thousand crowns. He was later found guilty of yet another episode of rape and extended his sentence by six months, while increasing the amount of compensation to 215 thousand kroons.
- 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature
- Reuters
- © Anders Wiklund / TT News Agency
The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded since 1901. For more than a century of history, world-famous prose writers, playwrights and poets such as Rudyard Kipling, Maurice Meterlink, Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, John Galsworthy, Luigi Pirandello, Hermann Hesse, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and others, Albert, have become laureates of a prestigious award.
Repeatedly the prize was awarded to Russian writers. The first of them to receive the award was Ivan Bunin, then Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn joined the list of winners.