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BY CAROLINE MAO ’22
On Thursday, Oct. 10, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Austrian author Peter Handke. The Swedish Academy, which typically awards the Nobel Prize in Literature each year, postponed their decision to award the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature to this year after a 2018 sexual assault scandal.
In November 2017, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter published an article in which 18 women claimed they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Jean-Claude Arnault, the husband of Swedish Academy member Katarina Frostenson.
The Academy also dealt with a financial scandal regarding a club owned by Arnault and Frostenson. According to The Guardian, Frostenson may have leaked winners’ names to Arnault so he could win gambling money. Though Academy membership is a lifetime position, three members left in protest, which also delayed the conferment of the 2018 Nobel Prize. Arnault was found guilty of rape on multiple counts.
The Academy finally awarded the 2018 Prize to Olga Tokarczuk, who joins 14 other women who have received the Nobel Prize in Literature out of 114 total awarded since 1901. Jennifer Croft, who translated Tokarczuk’s “constellation novel,” “Flights,” which won the 2018 International Booker Prize, celebrated Tocarczuk’s achievement in an article in The Paris Review.
“Olga is ‘the’ Nobel laureate. She’s the one the prize was made for,” Croft wrote. Though Croft described some difficulties in convincing publishers to accept translations of Tokarczuk’s work for an American audience, Tokarczuk is an important Polish writer. An “alternative” Nobel Prize in Literature, known as the New Academy prize, was organized as a “one-off” award to fill the gap in 2018. It was awarded to Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé. A recipient of numerous awards and a professor emerita at Columbia University, Condé is best known for her novel “Segu.”
However, the choice to award Handke the 2019 Prize was much more controversial. According to the Nobel Prize committee, Peter Handke received the 2019 prize for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
Handke has previously been accused of supporting Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Miloševic; Handke gave the eulogy at the dictator’s funeral. According to The Intercept, Handke has a secret passport from Miloševic-era Yugoslavia and endorses pro-Serbian views.
Petrit Selimi, the former prime minister of Kosovo, called the Academy’s choice “the single most offensive possible decision” in a tweet.
Orlando Figes, a professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London, described Handke as a “notorious apologist for the murderous regime of Slobodan Miloševic.”
An article in The Guardian written a few days prior to the prizes’ conferment quotes Nobel Prize in Literature committee chair Anders Olsson, who desires to avoid the “male-centric” and “Eurocentric” perspective that the committee had previously used.
In the wake of this declaration, The Guardian called the Academy’s selection “incredibly strange.”
It was also condemned by PEN America president Jennifer Egan, who said, “We reject the decision that a writer who has persistently called into question thoroughly documented war crimes deserves to be celebrated for his ‘linguistic ingenuity.’”
“I can’t say I was surprised exactly at the two picks, since the prize is shrouded in so much mystery,” Mount Holyoke Professor of English Jerrine Tan said. “What does ‘the most outstanding work in an ideal direction’ mean? And for whom?”
Tan will be teaching a class on Nobel literature in the spring.
“Given that ... Anders Olsson had acknowledged the committee’s Eurocentric focus in the past ... I wondered if the two choices (both from European countries) were ironic or revealing,” Tan said.
Tan concluded, “At any rate, it invites us all to question, reconsider and reevaluate the great store we set by these literary awards.”