Stockholm (AFP)

Austrian writer Peter Handke, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature, on Saturday devoted his "reading" - a speech before the presentation of his prize Tuesday in Stockholm - instead of memories in his work, avoiding controversy over his positions pro-Serbian.

Poland's Olga Tokarczuk, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature this year, has chosen to evoke a dark vision of a "dying" world, lost in the mirages of autofiction.

The two winners, like those of the Nobel Prize in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics, will receive their prizes on Tuesday from the hands of the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustav.

No journalist was allowed to attend the speeches given in the majestic Hall of the Stock Exchange on the first floor of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prizes. This "for security reasons," told AFP a source close to the organizers.

The interventions were broadcast live on the Nobel Foundation website.

The "reading" of the Austrian writer, caught the day before at a press conference by the controversy over his pro-Serb positions during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, carefully avoided all controversy.

- Mother's tales -

Focusing on his literary reminiscences and the preponderant role of his mother's stories, the 77-year-old, deeply moved when reading his text, chose not to respond to criticism.

On Friday he said he liked "literature, not opinions", which he confirmed enamelling his intervention of literary references and closing it with a poem of the 2011 winner, the Swede Tomas Tranströmer.

In 1999, Handke condemned the Western bombing of Serbia, led to force Slobodan Milosevic, a strong man from Belgrade, to withdraw his troops from Kosovo.

In 2006, he went to the funeral of Milosevic, who died before hearing his verdict for war crimes before international justice.

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.

- A "dying" world -

His reading, also read behind closed doors, lamented everyone's self-obsessiveness, obsessed with self-promotion and looking at the world "in pieces, separated from each other, in small pieces that are so many distant galaxies some of other".

For the 57-year-old writer, wearing a long black dress, "the world is dying and we are unable to notice", obsessed by our own staging.

According to her, it is important to find a new type of narration.

"Could there be a story that goes beyond this non-communicative prison that is the self, revealing a more varied reality and showing mutual connections?" Wonders Tokarczuk, persuaded of the need to redefine itself.

"It would be best to tell stories honestly in a way that (...) enhances the ability of the reader to unite fragments in a common project," she concluded.

© 2019 AFP