The 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Austrian author Peter Handke, while the 2018 award, postponed from last year, was given to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk.
Peter Handke (2019)
According to the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2019 is awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.
Handke won the award “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human
His debut novel “Die Hornissen” (“The Hornets”) was published in 1966, and his other works include the 1969 play “Publikumsbeschimpfung” (“Offending the Audience”).
Handke has become “one of the most influential writers in Europe after the Second World War,” according to the Nobel committee.
He was born in 1942 in southern Austria. He started studying a law degree in 1961 but broke off his studies when “Die Hornissen” was published.
Olga Tokarczuk (2018)
According to the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 is awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.”
Her first work of fiction “Podróz ludzi Ksiegi” (“The Journey of the Book-People”) was published in 1993, but it was her third novel “‘Prawiek i inne czasy” (“Primeval and Other Times”) that marked her major breakthrough. It was published in Polish in 1996 and translated into English in 2010.
112 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since 1901.
Olga Tokarczuk’s has also won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for novel “Flights”.
More facts about Nobel Prizes in Literature
- 4 Literature Prizes have been shared between two persons.
- 15 women have been awarded the Literature Prize so far.
- 41 years was the age of the youngest Literature Laureate ever, Rudyard Kipling, best known for The Jungle Book.
- 88 years was the age of the oldest Literature Laureate ever, Doris
