The first ever dual Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke

By Jonny Diamond

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October 10, 2019, 7:01am

Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke have been awarded the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature, respectively (the prize was not awarded in 2018 after scandal and impropriety rocked the Swedish Academy).

Tokarczuk was one of this year’s favorites to win; here’s translator Jennifer Croft on the intense, nationalist backlash The Books of Jacob received in Tokarczuk’s native Poland. Here’s an excerpt from her novel, Flights (trans. Jennifer Croft), and from her latest, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones).

Austrian playwright/aphorist/novelist Peter Handke… was not one of this year’s favorites. Here’s what critics thought of his latest novel in translation, The Moravian Night.