Vienna (AFP)
A meeting scheduled Wednesday in his native region between the Austrian Nobel Prize for Literature 2019 Peter Handke and journalists was canceled according to its organizer, the pro-Serb writer now refuses to comment on the reactions caused by his distinction.
Arrived Tuesday to be honored by the local elected officials in Carinthia (south), the 76-year-old author who lives near Paris did not appreciate that Austrian reporters unexpectedly question him about the emotion caused by his distinction in Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania.
"I do not hear anything coming out of anyone's mouth that could make me feel like I've read something or know what I wrote," he said. according to public TV ORF hate reporters, before interrupting the conversation. "It's always the same question: I'm asked to react to the reactions I'm a writer, I'm from Tolstoy, I'm from Homer, I'm from Cervantes, leave me in peace and do not ask me kind of questions. "
According to the Austrian media, Peter Handke now says he never wants to respond to the media, which he says he has no interest in his literature, despite his Nobel Prize.
Although the writer's public positions differ greatly from the content of his writings, Peter Handke is considered by some to be an admirer of Slobodan Milosevic and a "denialist" of the crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
By receiving the prestigious German Book Grand Prix on Monday, Bosnian-born author Sasa Stanisic, who fled conflict at the age of fourteen and now lives in Hamburg, said he had "the chance to to escape what Peter Handke does not describe in his texts ".
"The fact that I am allowed to be here today is due to a reality that this person has not yet apprehended," said Stanisic.
© 2019 AFP