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Slobodan Milosevic Sympathiser Awarded Nobel Literature Prize
Milica Stojanovic Belgrade BIRN October 10, 2019
The Nobel committee sparked controversy by awarding its 2019 literature prize to Austrian author Peter Handke, who expressed sympathy for Serbian strongman leader Slobodan Milosevic.
The decision to award this year’s Nobel Prize for literature to Austrian author Peter Handke, alongside Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, has sparked angry reactions because of Handke’s past support for Slobodan Milosevic’s regime.
Kosovo’s ambassador to the United States, Vlora Citaku, described the decision as “preposterous and shameful”.
British historian and author Orlando Figes said he was “deeply shocked” that a “notorious apologist for the murderous regime of Slobodan Milosevic” had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Nobel committee said that for several decades, Handke had produced “influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”.
He has written many novels, dramas, poetry and essays, worked on films, and collaborated with director Wim Wenders, for whom he co-wrote the screenplay for ‘Wings of Desire’.
But his sympathy for Serbia during the war years under Milosevic’s regime has long been a source of controversy.
In 1997, Handke wrote what was seen as a pro-Serb book about the Balkan wars entitled ‘A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia’, and in March 2006, when Milosevic died, he attended the Serbian leader’s funeral in his hometown Pozarevac in Serbia and made a speech.
“I don’t know the truth. But I look. I listen. I feel. I remember. This is why I am here today, close to Yugoslavia, close to Serbia, close to Slobodan Milosevic,” Handke said at the funeral.
He turned down a nomination for the 2006 Heinrich Heine Prize amid a similar uproar over his reported sympathies for Milosevic, and there were protests when he was awarded the 2014 International Ibsen Award.
In 1999, he returned Germany’s Buechner Prize in protest at the country’s involvement in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which was aimed at forcing Milosevic to end his military campaign in Kosovo.
As winners of the Nobel prize, both Handke and Tokarczuk will receive around 830,000 euros and a medal.
Tokarczuk, a leading Polish novelist and political activist who has criticised her country’s right-wing government, became the 15th female winner of the Nobel prize.
https://balkaninsight.com/2019/10/10...erature-prize/
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