Peter Handke is not invited to Rinkeby during the Nobel week

Every year since 1988, Rinkeby School has carried out a project where school students read about this year's Nobel Laureate, who is also invited to attend in connection with the Nobel Week. But following the criticism of Austrian author Peter Handke, who was awarded this year's Nobel Prize, only the 2018 Nobel Laureate, Olga Tokarczuk, will be invited.

- It is not us who can decide who comes, but it is the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Museum that ensures that a Nobel Laureate will come to us. We have only invited Olga Tokarczuk this year. We have not invited Handke, but we think Olga will be enough.

The decision follows in the suites of the debate that arose around the 2019 Nobel Laureate. Since the award was announced, he has received widespread retroactive criticism for his position on the Serbian side during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

- We have written about both, we have read both and we have with both booklet given to the Nobel laureates. But we do not want to draw the kids into this big thing about Peter Handke. It could be protests and we do not want to expose them, because they are children and it is too difficult for them to make a decision on all this, says the author and Nobel Rinkeby's founder Gunilla Lundgren to the Culture News.

How did the kids react to this?

- We have discussed that very thing with them, but we think Olga Tukarczuk will fit very well in Rinkeby, says Gunilla Lundgren.