STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 (AP) — The 2018 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” while the 2019 prize went to Austrian author Peter Handke.
Mats Malm, the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, says Handke was honored “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
The shortlist was made of eight names of which two were picked for the 2018 and 2019 awards, said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy.
With the glory comes a 9-million kronor ($918,000) cash award to be shared a gold medal and a diploma. The laureates receive them at an elegant ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10 the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896 together with five other Nobel winners. The sixth one, the peace prize, is handed out in Oslo, Norway on the same day.
Two Nobel Prizes in literature — one for 2019 and one for last year — will be announced Thursday after the 2018 literature award was postponed following sex abuse allegations that had rocked the Swedish Academy.
The chemistry prize went Wednesday to three scientists for their work leading to the development of lithium-ion batteries. That was a day after the physics award was given to a Canadian-American and two Swiss, and on Monday the Physiology or Medicine award went to two Americans and one British scientist.
So far, nine Nobel prizes have been awarded this week and all the laureates are men.
The coveted Nobel Peace Prize is Friday and the economics award on Monday.
Recent winners of the Nobel Literature Prize
2019: Peter Handke (Austria)
2018: Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)
2017: Kazuo Ishiguro (Britain)
2016: Bob Dylan (US)
2015: Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus)
2014: Patrick Modiano (France)
2013: Alice Munro (Canada)
2012: Mo Yan (China)
2011: Tomas Transtromer (Sweden)
2010: Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
2009: Herta Mueller (Germany)
2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France)
2007: Doris Lessing (Britain)
2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
2005: Harold Pinter (Britain)
