Stockholm (AFP)

Peter Handke receives the Nobel Prize for Literature 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 Austrian Nobel Prize for Literature 2019, the Swedish Academy provoked a wave of indignation in the Balkans and around the world because of its support for the former strongman of Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic. .

This controversy would almost eclipse the 2018 laureate, Poland's Olga Tokarczuk, fifteenth woman to receive the prestigious award since its inception in 1901. The 2018 award was unveiled at the same time as Handke's after her postponement last year due to an affair. of rape and internal divisions that imploded the academy.

At the age of 77, Peter Handke will receive his award from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony with the other prize winners, with the exception of the Oslo Peace Prize. Celebrations will culminate with a sumptuous banquet to which 1,200 hand-picked guests are invited.

At the Town Hall banquet, Peter Handke, along with the winner of the Michael Kremer Economics Award, is the furthest winner of the Royal Family. However, it is not unusual: Belarussian Svetlana Alexievich held almost the same place in 2015.

Olga Tokarczuk, she is the neighbor of the king and prince Daniel, husband of Crown Princess Victoria, and sitting in front of Queen Silvia.

Neither the Nobel Foundation nor the Royal House ever comment on the placement.

The Swedish Academy praised Peter Handke as "one of the most influential writers in Europe since the Second World War" and according to the chairman of his Nobel Committee, Anders Olsson, Handke "is not a political writer".

- Boycotts -

A Nobel committee member of literature nevertheless announced in early December his resignation to mark his disagreement. And a prominent academician, Peter Englund, has said he will not attend the ceremonies.

"Celebrating Peter Handke's Nobel Prize would be pure hypocrisy on my part," he said.

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 to participate at an anti-Handke demonstration in the heart of Stockholm at 18:00 (17:00 GMT), while a rally is scheduled for 14:00 outside Konserthuset, where the prize-giving ceremony will be held. .

"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.

The leading Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter (DN), publishes on the front page a photo of Srebrenica mothers gathering on the graves of their sons, husband or father, as well as a two-page report in the martyr village.

In the cultural pages of the newspaper, the writer Jasenko Selimovic, born in Sarajevo and refugee in Sweden in 1992, considers that the honor made to Peter Handke "will haunt the Swedish Academy for eternity". "The Nobel Prize brought me back to the reality of the siege of Sarajevo by the Serbian forces," he writes.

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

© 2019 AFP