Toward Racial Justice: Voices from the Midstate Austrian author Peter Handke sits in his garden at his house in Chaville near Paris Handke was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in literature earlier Thursday (Stockholm) — Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian writer Peter Handke won the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes for literature on Thursday a rare double announcement that came after no prize was announced last year due to sex abuse allegations that tarnished the group awarding the prizes The Swedish Academy said Tokarczuk won for works that explore the “crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Handke’s work was described as exploring “the periphery and the specificity of human experience” with linguistic ingenuity Tokarczuk is only the 15th woman to win the Nobel literature prize in more than a century is one of Poland’s best-known authors with a fast-growing reputation in the English-speaking world She has been criticized by Polish conservatives — and received death threats — for criticizing aspects of the country’s past She is also a strong critic of Poland’s right-wing government Her novel “Flights,” which won the Booker International Prize in 2018 combines tales of modern-day travel with the story of a 17th-century anatomist who dissected his own amputated leg and the journey of composer Frederic Chopin’s heart from Paris to Warsaw after his death Poland’s Culture Minister Piotr Glinski who said earlier this week has not finished any of Tokarczuk’s books tweeted his congratulations to her and said he now felt obliged to go back and read her books all the way through playwright and screenwriter described by the academy as “one of the most influential writers in Europe” after World War II He was praised for writing powerfully about catastrophe notably in “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams,” his 1975 novel about his mother’s suicide The literature prize was canceled last year after an exodus at the exclusive Swedish Academy was convicted last year of two rapes in 2011 Arnault allegedly also leaked the name of Nobel Prize literature winners seven times The Nobel Foundation had warned that another group could be picked to award the prize if the academy didn’t improve its tarnished image but said in March it was satisfied the Swedish Academy had revamped itself and restored trust The 2018 and 2019 awards were chosen by the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee a new body made up of four academy members and five “external specialists.” Nobel organizers say the committee suggests two names which then must be approved by the Swedish Academy It’s unclear whether the academy members simply rubber-stamped the experts’ choice chair of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee said “we are not ready to evaluable this new process yet.” Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel specifically designated the Swedish Academy as the institution responsible for the Nobel Prize in literature chemistry and medicine should be awarded in Stockholm The coveted Nobel Peace Prize set to be awarded on Friday and the economics award on Monday Wednesday’s chemistry prize went to John B a German-born engineering professor at the University of Texas; M a British-American chemistry professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton; and Japan’s Akira Yoshino of Asahi Kasei Corporation and Meijo University an emeritus professor at Princeton University won the physics prize for his theoretical discoveries in cosmology together with Swiss scientists Michel Mayor The latter were honored for finding an exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — that orbits a solar-type star two Americans and one British scientist — Drs of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Peter J Ratcliffe of Britain’s Francis Crick Institute and Oxford University — won the prize for advances in physiology or medicine They were cited for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.” With the glory comes a 9-million kronor ($918,000) cash award The laureates receive them at an elegant ceremony on Dec 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896 — in Stockholm and in Oslo and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report Become a WITF sponsor today » We spotlight and uplift the creators around us Driving Directions Request a Tour Following Handke’s controversial win, Alex Marshall and Christopher F Schuetze look back at the writer’s life and times I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Peter Handke, the Austrian author who received the Nobel Prize in Literature on Tuesday in a bad-tempered exchange during a news conference in Stockholm last week Unfortunately for Handke Some see him as a genius who has pushed the boundaries of what novels and plays can be Handke has been accused of genocide denial for questioning events during the Balkan wars of the 1990s – including the Srebrenica massacre in which some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered He has also been criticised for delivering a eulogy at the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic the Serbian politician who was tried in The Hague for war crimes when the Swedish Academy named Handke the 2019 laureate a Bosnian-German author who fled the war as a child said in an email that the decision was “a punch in the gut” for the conflict’s victims the organisation that chooses the Nobel laureates for literature author Peter Englund said he would not participate in any of this year’s events “This is a matter of conscience for me,” Englund said But some literary heavyweights see no better choice “I can’t think of a more obvious Nobel laureate than him,” Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard said adding that Handke had written masterpieces in every decade of his career “The great poet Handke has earned the Nobel prize 10 times,” Elfriede Jelinek an Austrian author who received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature But few have had the chance to ask Handke himself in detail about his writing but he ended the impromptu news conference after being asked about his writings on the Balkan wars “Leave me in peace and don’t ask me such questions.” At the news conference in Stockholm on 6 December Handke singled out a letter from The New York Times requesting an interview for this article; he declined the request saying he did not want to answer “empty and ignorant” questions (His publisher had already turned down several other requests.) Handke assumed his stepfather – a man who got violent after drinking Handke has written – was his biological father in a remote provincial region,” said Malte Herwig a journalist who wrote a biography of Handke He was the only one who went to college and so on.” “He still has this air about him,” Herwig added Handke’s sister was carried in a shopping bag a stark account of his mother’s life and suicide that was published in 1972 The Second World War and its aftermath had a clear effect “He was a highly sensitive kid,” he said of Handke or easily startled” and “totally a square peg in a round hole” Handke made his childhood a focus of his Nobel lecture saying that his mother’s stories – about the tragic life of an “idiot” milkmaid and the death of her brother – had “provided the impetus for my almost lifelong career as a writer” Handke pushed the boundaries of literature He wrote a wordless play – The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other – whose text consists almost entirely of descriptions of the characters walking across the stage empties a bucket of ice cubes which crackle and bounce all over.”) ends with the actors throwing insults at the crowd The German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called him “the darling of the West German critics” it was generally by conservative literary figures who disliked his avant-garde tendencies When he published two essays in January 1996 about a trip to Serbia (released in book form as A Journey to the Rivers his detractors came from beyond the literature pages Herwig said that during the Balkan wars, Handke read news reports at his home in France and became annoyed that they overwhelmingly portrayed Serbia as the conflict’s villain Handke’s first instinct was not to accept those reports as accurate “I want to ask how such a massacre is to be explained carried out,” Handke wrote about Srebrenica He went to Serbia and Serbian-controlled parts of Bosnia and spoke to locals seemed to many to go beyond seeking context to play down or question the facts through literary games Herwig said that Handke had been insensitive to Bosnian Muslim victims of the war and allowed himself to be instrumentalised by Serbian nationalists – but nonetheless deserved the Nobel prize Scott Abbott, an American translator who accompanied Handke on a visit to Serbia said in a telephone interview that the author was drawn to the country because of his family’s Slovenian heritage (Slovenia and Serbia were both part of Yugoslavia until 1992.) Handke travelled throughout Yugoslavia, and wrote “several wonderful essays” about those trips, Abbott said, such as one about a shoe-shiner in Croatia, and another about the variety of head coverings he saw in Macedonia. “He had the sense for Yugoslavia as this incredible, rich multicultural state that lacked the kind of nationalisms that he saw in Germany and Austria,” Abbott said. “It was almost a utopian place for him.” When Yugoslavia collapsed, Handke saw that utopia disappearing, Abbott said. Zarko Radakovic, a friend who has travelled in the region with Handke, and who has translated his work, said in a telephone interview that “Yugo-nostalgia” was central to the writer’s worldview. “Of course it is very difficult to write about civil war,” Radakovic said. Handke, he added, “just wanted to be a counterweight to everything that had been written and said in the media. He went there and walked and described.” Radakovic and other Handke supporters believe that the critics had focused on a few controversial passages in Handke’s works, but had not read enough to judge the author’s motives. “Handke is such a complex, difficult author,” Radakovic said. “All of his 87 works are somehow connected.” “I trust somebody who is so completely free of clichés and just sees the world and reacts,” he added. Herwig said he had no problem with Handke’s criticism of journalistic language, but added: “He eventually did some of the things he accused journalists of: false bias, false contextualisation.” “His friends told him straight away, ‘If you publish that, that’s going to get you into hot water,’” Herwig added. “And he continued.” But even many of Handke’s most ardent supporters have difficulty explaining why he spoke at Milosevic’s funeral. “I look at those photos of him, against that huge photo of Milosevic, and I just think, ‘What the hell?’” Abbott said. He added that Handke has insisted his funeral speech was not an endorsement of Milosevic, but a lament for Yugoslavia. “But what he’s stepping aside from is that if he stands there, that means something, too,” Abbot said. Other writers would have backed down in the face of such condemnation, but Handke has not. “I need not defend or take back a single word,” Handke wrote in the preface to the American edition of A Journey to the Rivers. “I wrote about my journey through the country of Serbia exactly as I have always written my books, my literature.” Herwig said this was not arrogance; “It’s defiance,” he said. Shortly after Handke spoke at Milosevic’s funeral, the storied Comedie-Francaise theatre in Paris cancelled one of his plays. In 2006, Handke declined a German literary award after politicians in the city of Dusseldorf threatened to revoke it. Others preferred to focus on his writings: in 2007, the Austrian national library bought Handke’s archive for around $750,000 (£569,000). Clearly, for the Swedish Academy, the work takes precedence. Rebecka Karde, a journalist who advised the committee that awards the prize, said that Handke had “said, written and done things I find hard to stomach”. But, she added, that did not mean he did not deserve the award. Handke went to Serbia “trying to unlock the world through his unique, idiosyncratic, literary presence”, Knausgaard said. “But the ambiguity and complexity that language offered, charged with Handke’s sympathies, unlocked a Pandora’s box of grief, anger and despair instead.” Viewing Handke as some sort of diabolical figure, Knausgaard added, was the opposite of the people in his writings. “The world and the people in it never are black, never are white, never are good, never are bad,” he said, “but all these things combined.” Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Dear Reader,Unfortunately our comment platform isn\'t available at the moment due to issues with our paywall and authentication vendor The announcement came after no literature prize was awarded in 2018 due to sex abuse allegations involving the Swedish Academy STOCKHOLM - Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian author Peter Handke - two writers whose works are deeply intertwined in Europe's religious ethnic and social fault lines - won the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes for literature on Thursday The rare double announcement came after no literature prize was awarded last year due to sex abuse allegations that tarnished the Swedish Academy the group that awards the literature prize Both winners will receive a full cash prize valued this year at 9-million kronor ($918,000) Yet if prize organizers hoped to get through this year's awards without controversy has faced criticism for his vigorous defense of the Serbs during the 1990s wars that devastated the Balkans as Yugoslavia disintegrated He also spoke at the 2006 funeral of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic who at the time was facing war crimes charges His selection as winner of the International Ibsen Award for drama in 2014 prompted protests from human rights groups The Swedish Academy praised Handke's work for exploring "the periphery and the specificity of human experience" with linguistic ingenuity The academy said she was chosen for works that explore the "crossing of boundaries as a form of life." She is only the 15th woman to win the Nobel literature prize in more than a century Tokarcuzk has been attacked by Polish conservatives - and received death threats - for criticizing aspects of the country's past She is also a strong critic of Poland's current right-wing government Her 2014 novel "The Books of Jacob" tackles the forced conversion of Polish Jews to Catholicism in the 18th century Her book "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" is a crime thriller with feminist and animal-rights themes that offers a sometimes unflattering depiction of small-town Polish life She won the Booker International Prize in 2018 for "Flights," which combines tales of modern-day travel with the story of a 17th-century anatomist who dissected his own amputated leg and the journey of composer Frederic Chopin's heart from Paris to Warsaw after his death who said earlier this week that he has not finished any of Tokarczuk's books tweeted his congratulations to her Thursday and said he now felt obliged to go back and read her books all the way through Polish President Andrzej Duda called it a "great day for Polish literature" on Twitter playwright and screenwriter described by the academy as "one of the most influential writers in Europe" after World War II he made his name with works that combine introspection and a provocative streak One early play was called "Offending the Audience" and featured actors insulting theatergoers several of them for German director Wim Wenders who also filmed Handke's 1970 novel "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick." He was praised by the Swedish Academy for writing powerfully about catastrophe notably in "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams," his 1972 novel about his mother's suicide Handke has attracted controversy for his staunch support of the Serbs during the 1990s Balkan wars "Justice for Serbia," he accused Western news media of depicting Serbs as aggressors in the wars that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia He was an opponent of NATO's airstrikes against Serbia for that country's violent crackdown in Kosovo in the late 1990s In 2014 he told the Austrian Press Agency that the Nobel prize should be abolished because of its "false canonization" of literature The literature prize was canceled last year after an exodus of members from the exclusive Swedish Academy The Nobel Foundation had warned that another group could award the literature prize if the academy didn't improve its tarnished image The 2018 and 2019 awards were chosen by the Swedish Academy's Nobel Committee a new body made up of four academy members and five "external specialists." Nobel organizers say the committee suggests two names that then must be approved by the Swedish Academy It's unclear whether academy members simply rubber-stamped the experts' choice chair of the Swedish Academy's Nobel Committee said "we are not ready to evaluable this new process yet." Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel designated the Swedish Academy as the institution responsible for the Nobel Prize in literature The coveted Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on Friday and the economics award on Monday Wednesday's chemistry prize went to John B a British-American chemistry professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton; and Japan's Akira Yoshino The latter were honored for finding an exoplanet - a planet outside our solar system - that orbits a solar-type star two Americans and one British scientist - Drs Ratcliffe of Britain's Francis Crick Institute and Oxford University - won the prize for advances in physiology or medicine They were cited for their discoveries of "how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability." The laureates will receive their honors at an elegant ceremony on Dec 10 - the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 - in Stockholm and in Oslo Monika Scislowska and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Hari Kunzru and Slavoj Žižek say the 2019 Nobel laureate ‘combines great insight with shocking ethical blindness’ Twenty years before Peter Handke would become a Nobel laureate Salman Rushdie named him the runner-up for “International moron of the year” in the Guardian for his “series of impassioned apologias for the genocidal regime of Slobodan Milošević” whose Slovenian heritage had inspired in him a fervent nationalism during the Balkans war had publicly suggested that Sarajevo’s Muslims had massacred themselves and blamed the Serbs Seven years after Rushdie’s scorching condemnation he would also attend war criminal Milošević’s funeral On Thursday, after the announcement of Handke’s win of the 9m Swedish krona prize (£786,000), Rushdie told the Guardian: “I have nothing to add today The decision to award Handke the 2019 laureateship – alongside Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk for the 2018 medal – was widely criticised by observers as a broken promise on two fronts the academy had left observers hopeful that the Nobel would stop eliding controversy with intellectual rigour and choose authors that could be praised for both their work and their politics More than ever we need public intellectuals who are able to make a robust defence of human rights ... Handke is not such a personHari Kunzru“Handke is a troubling choice for a Nobel committee that is trying to put the prize on track after recent scandals,” said author Hari Kunzru who has taught the laureate’s work to his students who combines great insight with shocking ethical blindness.” Kunzru said he believed that Handke would have won the Nobel earlier, “had he not decided to act as a propagandist for the genocidal Milošević regime” He added: “More than ever we need public intellectuals who are able to make a robust defence of human rights in the face of the indifference and cynicism of our political leaders Our reaction should be: not the literature Nobel prize for Handke but the Nobel peace prize for Assange.” He wrote of how he envied me: while those Austrians and Germans How less materialistic and more spiritualised we were I found him cruel and totally self-absorbed in his naivety.” president of literature and human rights organisation Pen America said that while Pen “does not generally comment on other institutions’ literary awards .. “We are dumbfounded by the selection of a writer who has used his public voice to undercut historical truth and offer public succor to perpetrators of genocide like former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic,” Egan continued “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.’ At a moment of rising nationalism and widespread disinformation around the world the literary community deserves better than this We deeply regret the Nobel Committee on Literature’s choice.” who spent several months in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war staging a performance of Waiting for Godot said Handke’s comments had “finished” him among his former friends in New York associate professor in German at the University of Leeds praised Handke’s ability to explore “the fringes of human experience in an extraordinary way and for his “early and complex form of ecopoetics” but said his Nobel win “shows that the prize committee is still infatuated by white European men writing in an elitist poetic tradition and is cloth-eared to the political complicity of those men” Some were pleased by Handke’s win, however: Serbian media lined up to praise the decision, calling Handke a “great friend”, while Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen called Handke’s voice “unfussy and unique … We have a lot to thank Peter Handke for Singer and songwriter whose 1980s hit Yéké Yéké was Africa’s first million-selling single who has died aged 70 from untreated health problems multi-instrumentalist and one of west Africa’s most versatile and commercially successful musical pioneers A national hero in Guinea, Kanté came from a jali or griot family of hereditary musicians and historians, and became known as the “electric griot” for his fusion of contemporary styles with traditional west African influences. His best known song, Yéké Yéké was recorded in 1987 and became the first African single to sell over a million copies - as well as being the first international dance floor hit to feature the kora Yéké Yéké made Kanté an international celebrity just as African music was gaining new audiences in the west thanks to the growing interest in world music But he was already well known across west Africa as lead singer with one of the region’s finest groups He was always destined to be a musician. Born in Albadarya, south-eastern Guinea was from a distinguished Malian griot family attended a local French school and at 15 was sent to Bamako Here he continued his griot education while also listening to western and Cuban music and working as balafonist a band much in demand at wedding festivals His musical skills came to the notice of one of Bamako’s most popular and adventurous groups, the Rail Band, who were employed by the National Railways of Mali to play at the Buffet Hotel De La Gare, next to Bamako railway station, where they performed anything from Cuban-influenced songs and French pop to ancient griot songs arranged for modern instruments. Salif Keita was their star vocalist and Kanté was hired to play the balafon and guitar – though he also taught himself to play the kora and would occasionally take the microphone to remind audiences that Salif was not the only great vocalist on stage After leaving the Rail Band (who had been on strike demanding their salaries as state employees) where he found that “people were crazy for modern music on traditional instruments” He started a small band in which he sang and played kora backed by other traditional instruments including balafon and djembe hand drums as he reworked salsa and western dance songs He had a residency at a fashionable city restaurant, where he was heard by Gerard Chess, director of the American label Eboni that specialised in disco and funk. His first solo album Courougnegne was released in 1981 and mixed in Los Angeles, where he had a “dream” meeting with Stevie Wonder His album À Paris (1984) included an early version of Yéké Yéké was co-produced by Bruce Springsteen’s original keyboard player David Sancious and was nominated for the French Victoires De la Musique award but it was not until Akwaba Beach (1987) that he became a major star This was the best-selling album that included the hit version of Yéké Yéké and its success was followed by high-profile events including a concert attended by tens of thousands in Central Park an easy-going collaboration with the English R&B singer Shola Ama In 2004 Kanté dramatically changed direction with Sabou an all-acoustic album that included no keyboards or electro-percussion but provided an impressive reminder of his instrumental skills His soaring vocals and sense of urgency made this a classic set – and it would be his last for eight years He had homes in both Paris and in the Guinean capital where he had plans for an ambitious cultural institute and had already built a studio where he recorded part of his final album La Guinéenne In 2019 he was “guest vocalist” on an album by Las Maravillas de Mali, celebrating the music of a Cuban-influenced Malian band from the early 1970s, and appeared at a concert with this new version of the group at the London Barbican. He was still in excellent voice – and was of course wearing white. He is survived by his wife, Sira Kouyate, and their seven children, Kebe, Tenin, Kader, Fatim, Zeynab and Marian (twins), and Mohammed, and by children from an earlier marriage. Mory Kanté, musician, singer and songwriter, born 29 March 1950; died 22 May 2020 this project represents a significant step forward in thinking about social housing and respectful urban densification It demonstrates the importance of a holistic approach to urban planning environment and human needs come together to create enriching living spaces This project is an inspiring model for future developments highlighting the possibility of combining architectural innovation and social commitment to improve the quality of urban life You'll now receive updates based on what you follow Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors If you have done all of this and still can't find the email the Austrian playwright and author has tested Read moreI still remember the experience of seeing his 1966 play Publikumsbeschimpfung In English translation it was called Offending the Audience – though the word “berating” seems more appropriate for a play made up of actors doing nothing but shouting at shocked and inspired audiences a 1967 play based on the legend of Kaspar Hauser the man who stumbled onto the streets of Nuremberg without any grasp of language but their fight with words make them even more mute; it is as though they have become part of a post-Holocaust condition in which the world must rebuild everything when he directed an adaptation of his own novel The Left-Handed Woman.) Handke turned to more personal subjects in books like his 1972 novel Wunschloses Unglück (Sorrow Beyond Dreams) in which he wrote – without overt emotion – about the suicide of his Slovenian-born mother not from the point of view of a son in mourning but simply as the story of a woman who methodically lays out her clothes before calmly taking her own life his novels have continued that extraordinary life work of discovering human existence with forensic analysis writing about all manner of subjects and attempting to explain them to us An attempt by the author to travel deep into the landscape to find himself even an attempt at understanding the toilet It was a shock to see him taking up the cause of the Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević going so far as to attend his trial in the Hague and later as part of Handke’s need to be awkward and wrong that artistic impulse to uncover the hornet’s nest and get stung himself How will his fellow citizens in Austria view their latest controversial laureate When his compatriot Elfriede Jelinek won the prize some years ago the Vienna tabloids blazed their fury and called her a Nestbeschmutzerin or “soiler of her own nest.” Will they do the same to Handke Hugo Hamilton’s latest novel is Dublin Palms (Fourth Estate) FILE PHOTO: Austrian author Peter Handke is pictured at his house following the announcement he won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature 2011 at 6:44 pm PTRoss Dress For Less is opening its doors March 5 in Woodinville in the store front formally housed by Linen 'n Things Although there is a Ross in Kirkland at Totem Lake the California based retailer decided Woodinville has enough shoppers for one of its stores "We choose areas where there is high visibility and other compatible retailers," she said Ross is the nation's second largest off-price retailer offering brand name clothing and household accessories at discounted prices The new store is in the same shopping center as Top Foods The new store will employ at least 40 people, Chaville added. Applications are available online at Ross's website Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts. There’s a strand of electro-assisted, dance-leaning French pop that’s captured the international consciousness The bands come from chi-chi burbs like Versailles or towns south of Paris It’s released by the über-hip Kitsuné imprint resulting in an anthem that ought to soundtrack a sunrise Alésia was the battle where Julius Caesar beat the Gallic tribes Visit Kieron Tyler’s blog More information about text formats We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. 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