Olayinka Oyegbile
Last year the Nobel Prize for Literature was not announced as a result of a scandal (https://staging.thenationonlineng.net/the-real-wmd/). It was a disappointment for some of us. The committee decided that to save the integrity of the award, a winner for the 2018 and this year would be announced at the same time.
Following that decision, Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish author, was named 2018 laureate for what the committee described as “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” This year’s laureate is Austrian author Peter Handke, who was chosen “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
At this juncture, I must also confess that my sphere of what books to read and look for have been expanded because until now, I’ve never heard about the two authors.
In the meantime, it would be interesting to read Handke because of the controversy his ward has aroused as a result of the 2006 funeral oration he gave at the burial of Serbian war criminal, Slobodan Miloševiæ.
Leave a Reply