STOCKHOLM:
Peter Handke says the decision to award him the Nobel Prize in literature was courageous.
The Austrian author, who lives in France, said Thursday the recognition gave him what he described as “a strange kind of freedom.”
He spoke outside his home in suburban Paris.
Handke was an opponent of NATO’s airstrikes against Serbia in the Kosovo war of the late 1990s and spoke in 2006 at the funeral of autocratic Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. His Nobel Prize has met with mixed reactions across Europe.
He has also criticized the Nobel committee in the past. But on Thursday he said he is reconsidering this because then, he says, he was critical as a reader and not a writer.
However, Kosovo has reacted angrily to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke.
Vlora Citaku, Kosovo ambassador to the United States, tweeted that “In a world full of brilliant writers, the Nobel committee choses to reward a propagator of ethnic hatred & violence. Something has gone terribly wrong!”
Gent Cakaj, Albania’s acting foreign minister who is originally from Kosovo, also reacted angrily.
“I’m appalled by the decision to award Nobel Prize in literature to a genocide denier. What an ignoble & shameful act we are witnessing in 2019!” he said.
Handke was an opponent of NATO’s airstrikes against Serbia in the Kosovo war of the late 1990s and spoke in 2006 at the funeral of autocratic Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Kosovo was part of Serbia until 1999 when NATO intervened to stop Milosevic.
Meanwhile Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, who on Thursday was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in literature, says she is happy that the 2019 prize went to Austria’s Peter Handke, whose writing she appreciates.
Tokarczuk, from Wroclaw, in southwestern Poland, said she has “not yet absorbed” the news of her award but is “very happy that a prize has also gone to Peter Handke, whom I highly appreciate.”
Speaking to the Gazeta Wyborcza daily the 57-year-old author did not specify why she liked Handke’s books, but said it was “fantastic that the Swedish Academy has shown appreciation for literature from central Europe.”
“I’m happy that we are still going strong,” Tokarczuk said.
